The Black Fief!

[odysseus]

Jan 11, 2014 19:02:40 GMT -6 blackadder23 said:

In other news, I didn't get one written up this week either because a local idiot chemical company dumped thousands of gallons of toxin into the municipal water intake (I wish I were kidding - 300,000 people can't use their water here). But I hope to do better next week.

Impressive !
I hope everything's back to normal now. No tap water is quite a pain in the ass.

[Ynas Midgard]

I hope things are okay and you will soon resume sharing your adventures for they are really entertaining.

[blackadder23]

Well, why not right now?

Confession time: I have grown hopelessly behind in these session reports, and frankly my detailed memory of some of them is getting shaky. So I’m taking Jeff’s advice and writing brief but pungent summaries of the past eight games. Xathoqqua willing, I’ll be able to resume detailed narratives starting next week.

“Pest-Holes of the Beast-Men”
After sojourning among the brutish cave-men for a few months, the party was restless for action. Anya proposed seeking out the abandoned garrison where some of them had originally adventured, and leaving themselves some warning in order to avoid becoming trapped in the past in the first place. Elena argued that this wouldn’t work because of the obvious paradox involved, and in the end the idea was abandoned because of the strong likelihood that the ruined garrison was hopelessly buried under glacial ice at the present time. Instead the party decided to make an effort to recover the valuable tusks of the enormous mammoth they had slain months earlier. Pulling well-equipped sledges, the party returned to that spot only to find the tusks recently removed and dragged away amid confusing and unwholesome-looking footprints. Most of the party was prepared to abandon the tusks, but Borgo convinced them that they could find the “thieves” and recover “their” property. The scout led the party to an icy canyon lined with cave-mouths, which proved to be the den of a tribe of vhuurmis, the beast-men who had ruled Hyperborea ages before and then degenerated to utter savagery. The party eventually decided on an open approach, and were greeted by stones and an endless supply of foul garbage hurled by the cave-dwelling brutes. The adventurers slaughtered the vhuurmis with arrows, bolts, spells, and bloody swords, and eventually drove them back into the tenebrous depths of the caves. The party searched the labyrinth of caves for the enormous tusks, fighting a running battle with the savage vhuurmis who leapt from the shadows to rend and bite. Eventually the party discovered the tusks, but Arn fell through the icy floor of the cavern as he went to fetch them. Climbing down after him, the party found themselves in a lower cavern lit by an eerie pink glow. Frozen in ice against one wall was the skeleton of a man with an unnaturally elongated skull. In his bony grasp was a lantern of purple crystal which glowed with a faint sorcerous light. The party claimed this prize, as well as the tusks, and returned to their adopted tribe with the injured Arn languishing on a sledge. Much to Borgo’s disgust, Anya insisted on giving one tusk to Chief Gog as a present; to the party’s shock and continued suspicion, Ginnungagap strongly supported Anya in this (and indeed in everything else). Arn was turned over to the tender care of a solicitous Ophelia, while the rest of the party admired their tusks and bemoaned the lack of anything from which to make alcoholic beverages in the Glacial Age.

“Out of the Black Gulf”
Chief Gog asked this friends in the party for help. In a few days there would be a great gathering of the cave-clans where the apish brutes would put aside their murderous differences and compete in a series of comparatively peaceful challenges. Chief Gog wished the party to prove their goodwill and worth to their clan by representing it in these games and (hopefully) winning. Overriding a surly Borgo, the party readily agreed and travelled to the site of the games, accompanied by an honor guard of cave-brutes and Arn’s “nurse” Ophelia. The other gathered clans were less than pleased by these interlopers, but Chief Gog soon bullied them into accepting the challengers. The adventurers competed in a series of challenges over the course of three days, most of them brutally physical and most of them won by the brawny Lars. Meanwhile Elena became concerned at how Grimalkin would arch and spit at the sight of some of the cave-men, particularly a few of the chiefs. Furthermore, the number of cave-men that upset the cat appeared to be growing. Elena shared her fears with the rest of the party, who began to watch for any unusual signs of trouble. An attempt was then made to kill Grimalkin, which ignited an altercation that left a dozen cave-men dead. Many of the others called for the blood of the party, but Chief Gog supported them once they explained their fears. A mob of the cave-men prepared to rush the adventurers anyway, but fell back dazzled when Elena produced the brightly-glowing crystal lantern from her cloak; unbeknownst to the rest of the party, she had discovered it blazed far stronger when given gemstones to burn. The light of the lantern had a terrible effect on some of the cave-men, who fell dead with their eyes spewing a curious red-brown mold. After that the remaining cave-men avoided the party with superstitious awe, and Anya led the party in search of whatever lay at the bottom of these matters. By following some of the cave-men that Grimalkin had viewed with aversion, the party discovered their enemy hidden in a nearby cave: a spore-man, a formerly human horror swollen with the intelligent and devious russet mold which falls to Hyperborea from the lightless depths of the Black Gulf. This alien fiend had been systematically infecting the cave-men at the clan gathering and turning them into its unquestioning thralls. With fire and sword in hand, the party soon put an end to this daemonic entity, thereby freeing its mental slaves. Ginnungagap, much to the bemusement of his companions, expressed particular horror at the possession of the cave-men by a fungous intruder from the Gulf. The party’s clan was proclaimed the victor of the convocation, and the adventurers were greeted on their return by another brutish and distasteful orgy – which now included the young men from the mill valley, who had pragmatically taken cave-women as mates and fully joined the savage clan.

More to come later...

[blackadder23]

“When a Star-Stone Falls”
A few weeks after the clan gathering, some hunters returned with awed news of a star-stone falling from the Black Gulf a day’s journey from the cave-folk camp. Immediately the party set out to retrieve this object, since such things are intrinsically valuable and frequently have magical virtue as well. The party cautiously approached the site described by the hunters, fighting and killing a sabre-tooth on the way, and to their dismay found the glowing crater surrounded by dozens of chanting, worshipful vhuurmis. Lars and Arn were keen to just attack them, but the cooler heads of Anya and her new best friend Ginnungagap prevailed. At Borgo’s urging, the party returned to their village and convinced Chief Gog to lead a general attack on the vhuurmis in exchange for a share in the star-stone. The party returned to the site of the fallen star-stone, which still teemed with superstitious vhuurmis, and led the hooting cave-men in a full-scale assault. A confused general melee followed, with the vhuurmis and cave-men equally matched in number and weaponry. The armor, weapons, skill, and magical power of the party soon tipped the balance, and the vhuurmis were put to flight with only a few cave-men slain. The victorious cave-men dragged away both the fallen vhuurmis and their own dead to line their larders – Borgo having extracted a promise to be saved a prime vhuurmis-haunch – and the party descended into the still-smoking crater in quest of the star-stone. To their dismay they found it gone, and an obviously fresh tunnel leading off into darkness. The party rushed down the tunnel with torches in hand, followed closely by Chief Gog (who was guarding his own interest in the treasure). For a seemingly endless time they followed the twisting tunnel, and then suddenly came upon three stunted figures dragging the star-stone. The creatures turned, and Chief Gog fled screaming back toward the surface with a cry of “Dero!” The small figures, with ghastly bluish skin and staring white eyes, raised ray guns and fired. Lars was struck and immediately burned to a pile of smoking ash. The other rays missed, and the party rushed the midget fiends before they could fire again. Elena blinded the dwarfish things with the sorcerous light of her crystal lantern and then, filled with an inexplicable loathing, the party hacked the dero to small bloody pieces which they then trampled underfoot. Mourning their fallen comrade, the party dragged the star-stone back to their camp – overtaking Chief Gog on the way and berating him for his cowardice. Chief Gog was unapologetic, explaining that the dero were mysterious underground dwellers who had apparently degenerated from an unknown race of men of great wisdom and power. Yet they somehow still retained the magic and science of their ancestors, and the best course on meeting them was to run the other way as fast as possible. The party exchanged uneasy glances, wondering just how bad the dero must for this apish brute to consider them “degenerated”.

“Children of Deukalion Part 1”
The party was joined by Ogg, an uncouth shaman of the cave-folk who wanted to learn their ways. Ogg suggested travelling to the wilderness home of an ancient shaman he knew, whose wisdom might offer them a way home. Since Elena and Ginnungagap had had little luck in either utilizing the star-stone or discovering further powers of the crystal lantern, the party agreed to this plan. They prepared well-stocked sledges, including supplies for an extended journey and a litter for Ophelia, who flatly refused to be left behind “to be eaten”; Arn dragged her on the sledge while she giggled and praised his manly muscles. The party travelled toward their destination for two days, subsisting on rations as they encountered little game, but on the third day turned aside to investigate something strange Borgo had spotted in the distance. It turned out to be a huge, oddly-shaped wooden ship almost entirely frozen in the ice. Entering the vast vessel through a rent in the side, the party discovered it to be filled with a maze of petrified wooden corridors and stalls, some of them still holding the scattered frozen bones of animals. Within the structure the party encountered a silent pack of ghostly-pale figures clad in tattered archaic Atlantean garb, which the adventurers took for the ghoulish or zombified remnants of the ship’s crew. However, Anya’s attempt to turn them proved futile, and the hot red blood they spilled when cut down shortly demonstrated them to be living men. The strange inhabitants of the stranded ship being put to flight, the party continued to explore, finding further evidence that this was a ship of ancient Atlantis. In the very heart of the ruined vessel they encountered more pale figures, these wearing Atlantean robes of better quality and smiling in greeting. Speaking in an ancient dialect that was just barely intelligible to the party, they proclaimed themselves “archons of Atlantis” and invited the party to share their hospitality. They seemed highly impressed by the adventurers and especially by the dazzling crystal lantern carried by Elena. Wary of trickery, the party followed the well-dressed men up ramps into the heights of the ship. While doing so, they noticed several openings on the side of the ship leading to ice tunnels, and realized that the glacier containing the vessel was honeycombed with the dwellings of these strange people. At length the party reached the bridge of the vessel, where they were introduced to the commanding Neptunus and the beautiful but sly-looking Thalassa, who appeared to be the leaders of the “archons”. Neptunus was obviously impressed – especially by Elena’s lantern – and greeted the party warmly. He explained that they were in a vessel built centuries before by the Atlantean sorcerer Deukalion, for the purpose of rescuing a select ground of people from that island before it fell to the cataclysm which Deukalion had foreseen. Attempting to flee to safety in Hyperborea – which the Atlanteans didn’t realize was now buried in ice – the great boat had run afoul of the Boreas and been swept well inland. The inhabitants of the ship had made a home on that lonely frozen mountainside where the ship came to rest, divided into mutually hostile factions of “archons” and “helots”, and their descendants dwelt there still. Neptunus invited the party to join his faction and provide the strength to defeat the helots once and for all. Borgo asked exactly why the party should help, and Neptunus offered them a fortune in Atlantean gold and magical items. Further, he recognized the lantern Elena carried from ancient accounts, and it could do far more than light the way to one with the right knowledge; he would put that knowledge at the party’s disposal. After a lengthy and heated debate, the party agreed to these terms and an alliance with the archons was made.

More to come later...

[odysseus]

Glad to read these reports again.

[Ynas Midgard]

Me too

[ratikranger]

I really enjoyed reading these reports blackadder23, certainly one of my favorite sections of this forum. Here's to hoping that you'll eventually find the time to post a few more, even if it's just short ones. The way you're running this campaign is quite inspiring, you're doing a lot of things I often wished I had done, especially the entire "ice age" environment. Extreme kudos!

[blackadder23]

Thank you! I hope to have more posted soon. Things got even crazier...

[blackadder23]

“Children of Deukalion Part 2”
Neptunus told the party that the war between the factions could quickly be ended by killing the helot leader Spartakos. He provided a map to a hidden shaft in the rear of the ship which would allow the party to descend unseen into helot territory, and a dozen archon guards to support the attack. The party proceeded to the rear of the ship, though not without misgivings; Anya questioned the honor of this entire course of action, while Borgo (though caring nothing for honor) expressed strong distrust of the smiling archons. The party eventually reached the lower levels and crept through abandoned rooms in search of the chambers of Spartakos (as marked on their map). The indicated area, however, proved to be a decrepit chamber filled with frozen rubble. Before the party could question their sullen Atlantean companions, a bellowing brass bull-man with a huge axe burst from a hidden alcove – a minotron! As the party fought desperately against the deadly automaton, they heard desperate cries and the screeching of a cat. The archon guards had turned on them, attacking Elena and attempting to seize the lantern while the party was distracted. Anya and Borgo rushed to her defense as Arn, Ogg, and Ginnungagap desperately battled the bellowing brazen automaton. Though sorely pressed, the party ultimately prevailed, reducing the minotron to scrap and slaying their treacherous companions. Elena was killed in the fighting; Grimalkin laid down beside his mistress and never moved again. The party had little time to grieve, for they found themselves confronted by the helot leader Spartakos and numerous helot warriors who had been attracted by the noise. Ophelia was instantly and obviously smitten by the tall, handsome helot leader. A new alliance was quickly made, and the party crept back to the upper levels with Spartakos and twenty picked helot warriors. They found Neptunus impatiently awaiting the lantern, and the party attacked his archon guards by surprise. A brutal combat ensued, with Neptunus calling upon the magical powers of the Atlantean sorcerers, but Borgo was able to creep behind Neptunus and stab him in the back. Thalassa, who had done nothing to help the archons and who had watched Neptunus die without shouting a warning, then called upon her men to throw down their weapons and acknowledge Spartokos as the ruler of their ship. It turned out that Thalassa was the sister of Spartakos, kidnapped many years before to be the concubine of Neptunus, and had merely been awaiting a chance for revenge. The party reaped a huge reward of jewels and magical devices, freely given them by Spartakos. Thalassa elected to join them in their adventures in the hopes of travelling to a warmer future climate, and pledged to assist them in the use of the Lemurian Lanthorn whose sorcerous powers she well understood. Ophelia announced that she would stay with Spartakos and become his queen, a statement that left Arn chagrined and relieved in equal measures.

“The Green Abyss”
A week later the party, amply supplied by the grateful helots, arrived at the icy cave where dwelt the ancient shaman sought by Ogg. The wizened brute muttered to them in his uncouth tongue, directing them to descend into a place called “the Green Abyss” and beg aid from the goddess Thal-Miri. Though dubious of this advice, the party travelled three days north to the indicated place. There they found a cavern filled with weird green vapors and unnatural warmth. At the entrance stood a familiar figure: Elena, with Grimalkin at her feet. Elena beckoned silently and vanished into the lurid mists, and the party plunged in after her. They found themselves in a nightmarish world where green mist stretched in every direction, and even beneath their feet. Though they could see nothing beyond a few feet, they seemed to occasionally touch unseen walls (and less identifiable things) in the mist. Always ahead of them were Elena and Grimalkin, just barely visible, leading them deeper into the viridescent depths. After a seemingly endless time, they found themselves at a fork where two paths vanished into the grisly mists, and there was no longer any sign of their silent guides. Remembering the words of the nameless druid, Anya led the party down the right-hand passage with only a token argument from Borgo. A moment later the green mists vanished, and the party saw they were standing in a single large cavern, dimly lit with a green light, and the entrance was only a few yards behind. On their left hand was a seemingly bottomless pit into which they might have plunged; faint screams and sinister laughter could be heard rising from it. Before them was a vast heap of bones, gold, and jewels reaching halfway to the roof of the cavern. As Borgo stepped toward this vision of wealth, a shape slithered from the depths of the heap and coiled atop it like a lamia: a huge naked woman with six arms and the lower body of a gigantic serpent – undoubtedly the “goddess” Thal-Miri, a daemon of the fifth order! The daemon regarded the party with glittering eyes before asking them why they had disturbed her rest. Anya stepped forward and asked Thal-Miri’s help in returning to their own time. Thal-Miri laughed with sweet malice and said the party members would all die in the icy wastes, and soon. However, if they gave her the Lemurian Lanthorn, she might “perhaps” restore them to their proper time. The party held an animated debate, with many of them favoring giving the lantern to the daemon. Anya, however, was adamantly opposed, and she was joined in this by Thalassa and the (now) ever-helpful Ginnungagap. Finally Anya wheeled to face the waiting daemon and refused her demand outright. Thal-Miri hissed in rage and rose to her full height, towering over the party with six wicked blades in her hands. Thalassa stepped forward among her companions and spoke a word of power in ancient Lemurian as she removed the cloak from the crystal lantern. Pure sunlight from the Lemurian Lanthorn flooded the cavern, and in a trice all signs of evil vanished: the lurid green light, the pit of torment, Thal-Miri herself, and (to Borgo’s horror) the heap of gold and jewels. It was a frozen, empty place now, and the abashed party filed out into the snow, ignoring the faint sound of Thal-Miri’s mocking laughter on the breeze. Three days later they arrived at the shaman’s cave, intending to punish him for the deadly danger he had sent them into. But on his pile of skins in the cave they found nothing but a serpent, which slithered into the shadows and vanished before Arn could strike off its head.

[blackadder23]

“White Flame”
A few weeks later the party was back with their caveman allies, still nursing their disappointment at the failure (apart from the acquisition of a number of Atlantean devices) of their trek to the shaman’s cave. Borgo argued that they should simply storm the Purple Tower with their newfound weaponry and demand that the dweller within set things right, but his hot-headed scheme was overruled by the others. Then Chief Gog came to them with the news that cave bears lairing nearby had mauled several members of the cave-tribe, and asked for their help in exterminating this menace. Glad for a chance at action, the party set out to slay the bears, although Ginnungagap stayed behind to continue his examination of the star-stone. The party found the trio of monstrous bears in a frozen cave, and slew them after a savage battle. Anya healed the severely injured Arn and Ogg, and the party returned to the village bearing the three gigantic bearskins as tribute for Chief Gog. To their horror, they found the village in shambles and numbers of the cave-people reduced to piles of white salt which were all too familiar to the party; the rest of the tribe had evidently fled in terror. The party found Chief Gog badly burned on the ground, and he whispered “white flame” before dying. Borgo immediately charged Anya with these deaths, claiming they were the result of her coddling a thing that they knew to be a space daemon merely because “it wore the face of one she liked so well”. Anya stood for a long time in silence, tears streaming down her face. Then she opened her pack and began distributing the small clay jars of holy water she had been secretly creating over the past few months. It was, she believed, the only thing that might be sovereign against the white flame creature, which they must now destroy without mercy. Borgo, smug with satisfaction, searched the snow and quickly found Ginnungagap’s tracks heading north. The party, heavily laden with arms and holy water, nevertheless caught up with the warlock before sunset, for he was staggering under the weight of the star-stone. Arn fired a shot from his radium pistol, which (though it missed) still caused Ginnungagap to drop the stone and flee into the growing twilight. The party charged after him, only to pull up short at a hideous buzzing noise and the sight of a column of white flame rushing toward them. Borgo shouted that the devil had transformed and fired arrows uselessly into the white blaze. Shots from Arn’s radium pistol and a beam of pure light from Thalassa’s lantern seemed equally ineffective against the creature. As the white flame entity surged nearer, the party began to hurl holy water. For a moment the fiery creature drew back, and its buzzing changed to an awful inhuman screaming. But soon enough the holy water was gone, and the screeching tower of white fire loomed over the party. As Anya drew her sword for a hopeless defense, a figure rushed between her and the column of fire. To the party’s amazement, it was Ginnungagap, and in his hands he cradled the star-stone. The warlock spoke words in an unknown language, and the buzzing of the white flame entity became a nigh-unendurable howl. An instant later the entity was drawn into the stone, wreathing the staggering Ginnungagap in white fire. Then the star-stone was torn from the warlock’s grasp, hurtling high into the sky and falling to earth in some far-distant valley among the frozen mountain peaks. The other party members looked on in amazement as Anya rushed to the side of the fallen Ginnungagap, her face filled with joy that her suspicions had proven wrong. Then she froze at the sight of the body lying in the gathering gloom, for pale white flames rose from Ginnungagap’s eyes, mouth, nose, and numerous hideous rents all over his body. After a moment of shocked silence, Anya overcame her fear and knelt in the snow beside the dying entity, which looked at her with lambent eyes. Choking slightly, she offered to heal the creature, but it answered in a buzzing voice that no human magic could save it. Anya wept for a moment and then asked why – why had the creature defended them against another of its own kind? The entity on the ground laughed softly, spitting white sparks, and said that there were no “others” of its kind. Anya reached her hand as close as she dared to the fading fire of the creature’s face and repeated her question: why? The flame entity gazed at her for a long moment with its burning eyes before whispering softly “Because he loved you” and disintegrating into a smoking pile of white ash.

“Return to the Shrine of the Bat-Toad”
The adventurers spent the next two weeks in Hawkford honing their skills with arms and spells – except for Borghast, who spent them drinking, wenching, and boasting of his exploits. Once they felt fully prepared, the party met in the common room to discuss how to proceed. They were anxious to continue their journey to the Black Fief, for they had seen numerous other adventurers passing through Hawkford; it wouldn’t do for someone else to solve the riddle and claim the prize first! And yet, all the gold earned in their last exploit had somehow sifted through their fingers without them actually purchasing any mounts or travelling gear. Ultimately the party decided to accept a job offered by the druids, to recover a Yoon’Deh statue from an ancient shrine to Xathoqqua, though they little relished the surly and devious druid leader Black Duncan. Anya stood puzzled during these negotiations, for she was quite certain she had heard all these words before. Could it be a premonition from Artemis? The feeling grew still stronger once the party entered the sinister foggy wood that housed the shrine of the Bat-Toad. She warned the others that hyaena-men were lurking in a clearing (allowing the party to avoid a fight), and saved Rezko from a deadly trap. When they reached a ravine that blocked access to the sinister shrine, Anya stopped Borghast from jumping across, saying that a crab spider was lurking there. The party flushed the spider from cover with thrown rocks and slew it with a hail of arrows. As the party climbed the steps to the shrine, Anya warned them to be on their guard against more hyaena-men who lurked there. These creatures indeed emerged from the shrine and charged; Anya fought to clear her head of a vision of Kirowan lying hacked and slain on the steps. The party overcame the hyaena-men without losses, although they might not have done so well without Rezko’s blade and Ginnungagap’s well-charged wand. Despite this victory, Anya’s foreboding increased as they entered the gloomy shrine. There were, she cried, terrible things in the stone vats on either side of the obsidian altar. Yet if they could remove the image of Yoon’Deh from the altar, they could be free of this place without battle. Though they half believed her mad, the rest of the party indulged Anya’s fears. Borghast climbed a column and travelled hand-over-hand across the ceiling until he was directly above the noisome altar. Then he carefully lowered a slip-knotted rope down and around the statue. Horrible black oozes rose from the vats at this intrusion, but the loop tightened around the image and Borghast yanked it from the altar. An instant later the party found themselves safe in a sunny clearing amongst broken stones, the image of Yoon’Deh tangled in a coil of rope at their feet. The party was battered but intact, and claimed their just reward from Black Duncan (who, seeing that no adventurers had died in order to retrieve the idol, delivered the gold with somewhat poor grace). That evening the party celebrating their lucrative triumph by getting blind drunk in the common house, and Anya saw the young druid (who had given them a token of Yoon’Deh) sitting alone and blowing green smoke rings. On sudden impulse, she excused herself from her friends and went to sit across from the nameless druid, who regarded her impassively. She looked him in the eye and asked what was happening. How did she know these things? The druid smiled and blew a single puff of smoke that resembled a white flame. All the events of the next several months – all the death and despair and hopelessness – returned to Anya in a rush. She gasped and then smiled. She did remember! Somehow, her mind had travelled back in time to warn herself. She could change it all, save them all. There would be no burning of the awful little girl’s house, no massacre at Strongfort. The party would never journey to the uncanny valley or be hopelessly trapped in the Ice Age. She could undo it all! The nameless druid chuckled and finally spoke. She could save everyone, said he, and yet save no one. It was an immutable law of the universe that each person, whether time traveler or not, could be in the same place but once. And what they said and did there, whether time traveler or not, was already writ in the annals of history and could never be changed. The white flame entity, lurking within Ginnungagap’s form, had somehow escaped this law and found itself in the same time and place as an earlier version of itself. Now Anya’s consciousness, unmoored because she was virtually touching the entity when it died, had also redoubled on her own timeline. History was being unwritten and rewritten. She could save everyone - and yet, she could save no one. The laws of time were not mocked. The paradox was resolved by creating a new timeline, where events would unfold affected by the future knowledge Anya held. In the original timeline, her friends had still suffered and died, and would continue to suffer and perhaps die. Anya could not exist in both timelines; she could remain here, in a timeline that would unfold at her will, or she could return to her friends in the Ice Age and (perhaps) save them from an awful fate. The choice, the druid told Anya gravely, was hers. Anya turned to gaze at her comrades, sitting warm by the fire and laughing over their mugs of ale. She thought of her other comrades, trapped in a time of endless ice and counting on her help. Finally she smiled and told the nameless druid that her friends were right here, and it was high time she rejoined them. She rose and walked back toward her comrades, who hailed her with ribald jests before making room for her at the table. But at the same time her comrades stood in the ice and dark and gazed on her with awe and something akin to fear. She lay in the snow, her fingertips just brushing the pile of white ashes that had been Ginnungagap, or something like him. Anya was pale, beautiful, and faintly smiling; she was also a polished statue of the purest white marble.

[The previous adventure was to be the last time that the couple playing Anya and Ginnungagap could participate in the campaign, so all the players cooperated to give them a proper sendoff. After much discussion following this session, it was decided that they really had been the heart and soul of the group, and the other players preferred to wrap up the campaign with the next session. I promised to come up with a real doozy and tie up all the loose ends. We’ll see if I succeeded in the next and last recap – for which I’ll be returning to the extended, more detailed format. Next week, all will be revealed!]

[blackadder23]

“The Chicken and the Egg”

The party consisted of the following characters:

Arn the Axe, a 6th level Viking fighter
Borgo the Orc-Eater, a 5th level Half-Blood Pictish scout
Ogg of the Cave Bear Clan, a 5th level Cave-Man shaman
Thalassa, a 6th level Atlantean magician

Shaken by the dissolution of the Ginnungagap-thing and the transformation of Anya into a marble statue, the party debated their next course of action without useful result. The bickering was cut short when Borgo, radium pistol in hand, declared that he was now in charge. The party would storm the Purple Tower as he had advocated all along, and demand that its monstrous inhabitant return them to their own time. The other adventurers were less than pleased with Borgo’s presumptuous attitude, but in truth they had no better ideas. At length they agreed to sleep for a few hours in the burnt ruins of the cave-folk village, and enter the Purple Tower at dawn. They would find their way back to the future, or die trying.

Just before dawn the party armed themselves with radium pistols, radiation grenades, poisoned arrows, and sundry magical devices, and began the descent into the valley of the Purple Tower. They hid among the ice crags as they climbed, trying to avoid the glow of the red flame atop the great Tower lest it betray their presence somehow. Apparently unseen, they reached the valley floor and slipped behind the Tower. The rear entrance was just as Arn and Borgo remembered it from far in the future, and they soon had the door open and were creeping inside. The rooms and corridors were equally familiar to Arn and Borgo, though everything was polished and gleaming. Yet they met no one as they crept through the Tower; could this place be deserted already?

At length the party reached the room with the idol-locked door, which glittered in the light of the Lemurian Lanthorn. The door was secured, but Arn wasted no time in retrieving the idols from their hidden compartment and arranging them to unlock the door. Uneasy in the brooding silence of the Purple Tower, the party mounted the stairs to the room where they had met (or rather, would meet) the terrible inhabitant of that place. The huge domed room with the carven walls was empty, though the party’s sense of brooding horror grew even stronger. Long moments passed when it seemed their journey had been in vain; and then the light of the Lemurian Lanthorn flickered and faded away in a matter of seconds, plunging the adventurers into a terrible fetid darkness.

After an interminable time in the Stygian gloom, a bloody red light filled the chamber. Yet it was no longer the domed room in the tower, but rather a vast cavern in the untold depths of the earth. Before them, on a carven throne surrounded by a litter of bones, sat the bloated and horrible form of an enormous bat-furred toad. This time there could be no doubt – it was Xathoqqua himself! The Bat-Toad regarded them with indolent hunger shining from his sleepy eyes. “Well, well,” quoth he. “I was only just thinking of seeking some morsels to fill my belly, and I find they have come to me.” As Xathoqqua reached greedily for them, the party half-heartedly raised their useless weapons. The Bat-Toad took no notice of their armaments as he slithered drooling from his throne.

“Wait!” cried Arn. “We have come to parley with you.”

“Eat now, parley later,” was Xathoqqua’s practical response. His enormous paws clutched at the party.

“Do not eat us, my lord Xathoqqua,” Arn responded. “Spare us, and we will bring you what you most desire!”

“Food is what I desire,” replied the Bat-Toad. “Now stop squirming.” His vast paws closed upon them all, and none even had the strength of will to fire a weapon.

“Spare us!” Arn shouted desperately. “Spare us… and we will bring IT to you.”

Xathoqqua paused, holding them mere inches from his lamp-like eyes and slavering fanged mouth. He looked at the party narrowly. “What? WHAT will you bring me?”

Arn leaned in and whispered confidentially, “YOU know. We will bring you… IT.”

Xathoqqua looked at them for a long time, his gross tongue running across his teeth and his fetid nauseous breath enveloping them. Finally he dropped them carelessly to the floor and squirmed back to his throne. “Yes, I suppose that might do. It might be worth going without a meal just this once in order to have… IT. But will you bring IT soon?” He leaned forward once more, eyes burning and mouth gaping hungrily.

Arn responded with an energetic affirmative, joined enthusiastically by the rest of the party. Xathoqqua sank back in his throne and smirked. “Very well. When you have IT, bring IT to the Purple Tower. I will await your return… impatiently.” The Bat-Toad snapped his gigantic fingers, and in a trice the party found themselves back in the domed room at the top of the Tower. The polished gleam of the walls told them immediately that they had been returned to the glacial age rather than their proper time, a realization which sent Borgo into a foul-mouthed rage that lasted several minutes. Thalassa wept hopelessly as Ogg tried to comfort her in his rough way.

The disheartened party descended the steps back to the idol-locked door, only to stop short at the sight of those who awaited them there. Before them stood a towering Hyperborean clad in rich furs, elaborate jewelry, and the antique armor of the pre-glacial kingdoms. Behind him stood dozens of stunted grotesque dero with wicked gleaming blades and doubtless-horrific ray guns. The Hyperborean’s lips parted in a wintry smile.

“Greetings, intruders. I am Rozmana Ghuul, warden of the Purple Tower. Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, my own dear sister was intended to inherit the office of warden. I held that position temporarily until she came of age, and I was loath to part with it. I might have simply had her killed, but that didn’t strike me as… poetic enough. So I sought a powerful poison of the snake-men, one which would leave her perpetually immature. Since she would never come of age, she would never inherit the Tower, and I would never surrender my office. So things transpired. I might have killed her then, but I decided it was more amusing to leave her as she was, trapped forever in the body of a child. She’s skulking somewhere in the Tower as we speak, accompanied by that horrible pet of hers, pursuing her arcane studies in the hope of undoing the effects of the poison. But she will never succeed. Even if she lives until long after the glaciers pass from the face of Hyperborea, she will forever be a child. Such is the vengeance of Rozmana Ghuul on those who threaten what is his.

“So ask yourself this, intruders: if I would do that to my own sister, what horrors await YOU at the hands of myself and the eager band of torturers behind me?”

Borgo’s eloquent rebuttal was a blast from his radium pistol directly at the Hyperborean’s face, followed by a hail of radium blasts and poisoned arrows from the other party members. The dero surged forward, firing their own weapons and swinging their vicious knives, as Rozmana Ghuul ducked for cover behind a column. Ogg was hit by a bolt of daemonic energy from a dero gun and instantly shriveled away to a smoking corpse. The floor in front of his surviving companions was soon littered with the twisted corpses of the dero. Protected by his eldritch armor and sorcerous devices, Rozmana Ghuul was unscathed. As the adventurers dropped their empty radium guns and drew their blades to battle the remaining dero, the Hyperborean stepped from behind the column and began chanting a terrible spell of death.

Before he could speak the last unholy syllable, Rozmana Ghuul stiffened and choked horribly. An instant later he exploded, spraying blood across the room. The surviving dero screeched and fled down the stairs. As the adventurers stood amazed, a pair of small figures stepped from the shadows behind the puddle which had been Rozmana Ghuul. To their horror, Arn and Borgo recognized the child Angelica, a sinister rod of lambent crimson in her hand. At her feet was her awful familiar Gnaw-Bones, eagerly lapping the fresh blood from the floor. Angelica regarded the party gravely, her head cocked slightly to the side.

“Do I know you?” she finally said.

Arn and Borgo emphatically shook their heads.

The girl stared at them for a moment longer. Finally she gestured at the stairs with the lambent crimson rod. “Go then. And tell everyone you meet that Angelica Ghuul granted you mercy this day.”

Awaiting no further invitation, the party rushed past the sinister not-child and her sneering rat-familiar. As they descended the stairs, they came upon a mob of dero with guns and blades in every stubby hand. Thalassa raised the Lemurian Lanthorn and unleashed a beam of purest sunlight. The subterranean dero screeched in agony as the light passed over them, and then transformed into purple shadows which sank into the walls and floors of the Tower. Before the last of the dero was struck down, a random bolt fired from their midst struck Borgo. Screaming, he burned like a torch for a moment before crumbling to ash on the floor. Arn and Thalassa wasted no time on mourning, but gathered as many fallen ray guns as they could before rushing from the Purple Tower. As they fled, they looked back and saw Angelica watching them impassively from the balcony of the fortress which belonged to her at last.

Thalassa and Arn paused briefly at the cave-folk village, to load food and other supplies onto a pair of dog-sleds. Some of the cave-folk’s dogs had returned in search of food, and were quickly recruited to pull the sleds. The two surviving party members were determined to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Purple Tower, for they felt sure the dero would come for them as soon as the sun had set. For hours they drove the dogs across the fields of snow and ice, as the yellow sun (still so unfamiliar to Arn) slowly passed away in the sky above. At last, as the sun dipped low on the horizon, the two companions stopped to make their stand. Arn calculated what he knew of their location, and then shook his head ruefully: Arn had finally come to the Black Fief - or what would be the Black Fief once a few aeons more had passed. Then he noticed ominous sounds from below, and realized the dero had been following them beneath the earth all day. At nightfall they would surely be swarmed.

As Arn laid out a number of ray guns on a snowbank in preparation for a hopeless but glorious battle, Thalassa peered closely at the Lemurian Lanthorn, whose lens bore a noticeable crack. Suddenly she cried out and dropped the lantern, her hand horribly burnt. The Lanthorn flared once brightly, and then sank into the ice and snow until its glow was lost from sight. Arn packed snow on Thalassa’s burnt hand and asked what happened. Around them the twilight grew thicker.

“It was damaged in the battle earlier,” Thalassa replied. “It’s leaking [word Arn couldn’t understand] radiation. Now it’s sunk into the earth and will poison this land for a million years to come.”

Arn froze. “Poison?”

“Yes. No one who claims this land will long survive. Surely less than a year. Maybe…”

“Nine months?” Arn whispered.

“Yes, I would guess they’ll be dead within nine months.” She looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

Arn’s only answer was to throw back his head and bray with mad laughter. He was still laughing as the ice-fields plunged into final gloom, as the stars wheeled overhead in uncanny configurations, as the snowbanks burst open and vomited forth monstrous dwarves in unstoppable numbers, as Thalassa fell dead upon the snow beside him with a smoking hole burned in her noble forehead. Arn laughed and laughed, and from a great distance he seemed to hear the mocking answering laugh of Xathoqqua, the slothful toad god whose final black jest is the futility of all mortal hope and effort.

[blackadder23]