The Exodus: Session 34

Khut’s feeling…
Like he can and will take on the world…
but he doesn’t know why…

CARDS
Hulugu
Human Relations Series #11: Accepting and Respecting Authority
The Cusp
The Old Empire
We are “Raiding” (totally not fleeing) north…
High season moves on, but the weather gets steadily colder…
The cold reduces the number of apparent snakes…
The Yaghuth fish out the most overt of Phaanin infiltrators…
Our troops condition is steadily improving…
But the caravan is becoming steadily more grim…
As the Apple Tree continues to feed off of our hope…
We breed up the slithers, store the eggs, eat the rest…
Go looking for some alternative mounts…
Semek’s wife comes reporting that the Empty Circle is closing to the east…
And a large number of Steppefolk are riding with them…
Seems like Forktongue sold us out (Shock!)…
Regardless, we need to get to the city and drop the ants…
Khut leads a recon party to the city…
Classic former-Thabannite…now amalgam…
There are flickering strange-blue lights in the city…
A fair number of people (not bugs) camped out…
We reach the edge of the city…but find no people…
no resistance…but goosebumps…wiggins…
Iron-dear has a strange sense of being watched…
Something spooky is going on…SPOOOOOOOOKY!
At about the time that Ado says “I think this is a bad idea…”
We find ourselves surrounded by hooded Phanin…
With a bunch of tall, lanky, flaming-eyes Old Imperials…
A dusty blizzard blows up…
“We have been sent to bring you…”
Vadim: “We’re sending our most volatile to talk with you
and they will be on drugs…”
Khadagan: “Why would you tip our hand?!?”
Vadim: “That’s our hand? Volatility and drugs?”
Everyone: “Yes…”
We transition…the phaanin’s skin rotting away…
We are in the middle of a populous city…
Lots of people encamped…tents…pennants flying…
Clearly Old Empire…of Shan Yu’s faction…
Squee: “Who’s Shanyu?”
Khadagan: “Someone we used to know…”
The undead Phaanin conduct us towards one of the largest buildings…
With each step we shift further into the Fade…
We enter an enormous mosque-like building…
All roundde and covered with Thaabanite artwork…
Big ‘ol Imperial thrones with a man and woman seated…
Vadim plays crazy and offers a wooden bowl of tapioca…
Shanyu greets us…
Apparently his consort wants to chat…
Or him to chat…she lays a hand on his arm…
Ado prepares a feast (illusory and scent-heavy)…
Shanyu refuses to break bread with us…
Since we might soon be at drawn blades…
"You come with the Empty Circle on your heels,
we’re greatful for the ones you left burried
in the salt flats…"
Ooooh…he has shiny red teeth…
Squee appears in his lap and starts beard-braiding…
Khadagan: “She’s a ‘Beard Lemur’…”
“Ah! The rare beard-lemur…”
Ellen-Dear waxes diplomatic…“We call it a Squee”
“Ah! Thank you for the Squee, it’s a noble gift”
Sorq approaches the consort: “Great Lady will you dine with me?”
Ladies only dinner ramps up in a side room…
Food is laid out…gray, green, gangrenous…
And dust-soaked water that leaves hands glistening black…
Sorq: “What may I call you?”
“I am now merely The Consort…”
Oh shit, it’s Ma’chek…
“The faded have no names…”
“May my sister join us?”
Iron-dear steps out of the shadows…
Khadagan: “This is my sister, she likes to watch…”
Sorq is crazy, we’re all in her head…
Khadagan: “So do I just leap out of your ear or something?”
Sorq: “Everywhere I go Squee’s in my head…
I go to the Fade, she’s there, to the Verge, she’s there”
DM: “You found an Empire of Darkness and she’s there in your
lap braiding your beard, believe me, people empathize…”
Ma’chek wants some amusement, some revenge…
Some pregnant pauses…some menace…
She unveils…her face is featureless, black, cracked ash…
Meanwhile we sit and chat with Shanyu…
Squee asks Shanyu about the cloaked woman…
“What’s a ‘Consort’?”
“Ah, the Squee talks”
Ithunn: “It’s the most intelligent of it’s kind”
He is not subtle in poiting out that his Consort is plotting…
With the assumption that we’ll all join him…
One way or another…eventually…
Also…he breaths…water vapor in the cold air…
Ado: “This is not you…” and he lays out some stories of Shanyu…
“You’re not tied to a consort, you owe her nothing…”
Ado tries to coax Shanyu into paying a visit to the spire…
We trade safe conduct in the city…
In exchange for letting him into the Spire…
AND the Consort…and his generals…
The Ladies’ Tea ends and Ma’check leaves…
There is a restlessness in the room as we head out…
Undead snakes lying in torpor begin to ripple…
Draw up their shrouds…their eyes ignite…
Palpable tension between the Consort and Shanyu…
Which is clearly, entirely an act…
We are conducted out of the city by old empire knights…
The gates of the city swing open and sand is blown out of the empty city…
We call a council of war…and invite a Yaghuth who Remembers…
“Remembers Forgetfulness” being the man in charge…
We need them to stand vigil while we head into the spire…
Watch out for what happens when we drop the ants…
Make sure everyone living thrives here…
Calm tensions…keep minds together in the face of the maelstrom…
We ask Hundreds to spy on Shanyu and Machek…
She goes into a shamanic frenzy…then goes still…
Machek cajoles Shanyu on his bad acting skills…
Hundreds plays out one half of a conversation…
Then grabs Khadagan…and passes out…
The caravan, spire and all, rolls into the city…
We set up camp, all 45,000 of us, Semek running in overtime…
Hoargrim is grumpy at us being “sitting ducks”…
We call to the tree and set down the ants…
There is a sound like splitting wood after an ice storm…
AND the ants come…take one look at the city…
AND Sorq feels the overwhelming urge to burrow…
The Red Emissary asks about the city…
Refers to it as one they ate the roots of long ago…
They go DEEP…all 100,000 of them!
Will not approach the surface unless Sorq says its safe…
After the ants submerge a pale-face, white-haired woman appears…
Bowed, breathing heavily, edges indistinct…
Grass and flowers spreading out from where she stands…
Vadim tries to hook her up with Ellen-Dear…
AND Ellen-Dear turns her down…
Vadim: “You’re always welcome in my tent…”
She gives Vadim the hottest kiss ever…
We take them with us and head for the spire…
Remembers Forgetfulness comes and complains about the fade-infected city…
Yaghuth priests sit, facing outwards, every 30 yards around the camp…
We toke up…We head in…with the Consort and Shanyu…
And the generals presumably hanging out outside to jump while we’re gone…
We enter the pillared hall…the brazier still burning with incense…
As Shanyu follows we all fade…the air grows cold…
the world bending with pools of darkness beneath their feet…
They seem more real…less shadowed…
A well-dressed couple in full regalia…
Khut listens to the whispers…there is a twisting in the air…
Things writhing…the fire in the brazier ignites…
A hallway directly ahead open where it was caved in before…
Our old winged friend from the fade squats on the throne…
Ado calls on the sense of the Lord of Light…glowing from inside…
Something here is terribly wrong…the light is changed…
Iron-Dear absconds with wingy-boys sword…
Khut pulls his bow…time stops…the arrow flies…and burries in Sorq’s back…
The Guardian shoots squee…the blow bringing out her sinful inner nature…
One eye flaming red…one burning green…it’s CHRISTMAS SQUEE!
And she sows…Confusion…
Ado drops some protection from wiggins on Khut…because yeah…
Sorq calls forth an army of pixies…which tear apart Shanyu and the Consort…
Khadagan lets loose a couple handfuls of lifeline spores…
They cling to the corpses of what had been Shanyu and Ma’chek…
Barruk beats on Ma’check’s body…smashing it to pieces…
Ellen-Dear animates and awakens the spire…
The skeletal arms embedded in the walls reach out for the Guardian…
Iron-Dear tries to have a chat with the walls…asking about her own past…
A skull says “the seed of memory lies farther within”…
The guardian starts pounding on Khadagan…with limited efficacy…
Then Ithunn jumps and punches him into a boney-armed wall…
Khut puts an arrow in the Guardian…and it Explodes into holy flames…
A burning crown expanding out around it…
or starts to…except Ellen-Dear shuts it down…
Some healing happens…then a wave of wolves climb all over it…and eat him…
Squee examines the bodies of the fallen…
Identifying them clearly as not Ma’chek and Shanyu…
By his fake-red teeth…
Khut looks up…the elves are gone…
He starts tracking…and, head-down, bumps strait into Ellen-Dear…
We debate what to do…until Khadagan tosses some purple lotus in the brazier..
Weird shit happens…we press deeper…
Pink light streams through windows we didn’t know were there…
Vadim rolls into the room, invulnerable on a wave of wolves…
There is a forest dipped in gold…
Pale-skinned beings with white hair and feather wings…
Khut stands very still and waits to have a psychotic episode…
Iron-Dear starts hugging everything: “I love you guys!”
Vadim: “Do you breed?”
Things rapidly go south…
Their voices like gongs: “You are not of the seed”
“You have to save your people…”
“Perhaps your prayers would be answered…”
“We will reveal the truth…”
“We will return the lord of lords to his rightful throne…”
There is a Lorax? … We are in THE very strange place…
Everything smells like rotting wood…
The forest disintegrate as the light bathes it…
The trees rotting and twist, metal replacing their bark…
Vadim prays to the Lord of Lords…trying to steal his cattle…
or rather…all the souls he put in this nice spire…
The angels turn to close the door…and get a little angry…
Or a LOT…
And its on…sort of…at least Ellen-Dear is kindof sober…
Ellen-Dear banishes Vadim…shoving him back into the real-world…
The Angels slam the doors shut, then hurl them back open…
“Begone from this place!”
Sorq: “I look forward to seeing your master…”
We leave…fast…
Vadim and his wolves appear in the middle of an all-out war…
Man-to-man, blood everywhere…lots of bad guys have us surrounded…
A twelve-foot-tall Githyanki knight leads the press…
Bodies litter the ground…mostly ours…
Which start to stand and join the salt zombies…
The dead numbering five thousand…
Yaghuth hold the line, walking steadily forward…
Chanting OM through their trunks…
Bursting into white flame as the zombies overrun them…
The old empire encircle the city…we form ranks around the spire…
Khut stands very very still, waiting to have a psychotic episode…
Ithunn grabs Khut to haul him out of the spire…
He lunges for her, slips, and bangs his head on the stairs…
Sorq sees that we are proper-fucked…but at least not mind-fucked…
The undead phaanin clearly chowing down on our forces souls…
Khadagan drops to his knees and starts praying…HARD CORE…
“To the one who exists at the root of all things,
the one who unites the fade, to the verge, to the cusp,
to the one fathered all things,
who sustains spirit and stone, leaf and bone,
I entreat thee now, make thineself known
come forth, sword of flame
come forth, crown of light
a nation of seekers are lost
a multitude of wanders search
without your truth,
they will fall under the blades of their foes
Come now, o nameless one,
Let your flame roar
Let your light shine
Let my people see you and be saved
Let your people see their savior and give thanks
let them give praise to you
and carry your name to the edges of the earth”
He feels hands on each shoulder…and its not Iron-Dear hugging him…
On the one hand the rich scent of apples…
On the other, the crackling of molten metal…
And he reaches out to the burning light of Tsaluth…
He externalizes the rage…
A heavy tred strikes the stair beside him…
An enormous creature…eighteen feet tall…burning, spreading wings…
Iron-Dear: “Hug!”
We feel sick…
And battle is joined as the doors of the spire open and dark angels pour out…
Vadim’s wolves charge into the fray to save the Gray Lady’s scholars…
Then a massive burning crown drops, surrounding the spire…
Barruk charges the Dark Knight who leads the Imperial troops…
Slamming into him with the full smiting force of his enmity…
branding him…“My enemies need to learn to despair!”
AND Squee turns him Pink…and his buddies…
Iron-Dear appears behind knight-boy and hugs him…with vigor…and knives…
Then Ellen-Dear sends in a bolt of lightning from the side…
Sorq calls down a storm of ice…which sublimates in the heat…
Steam rolling across the battlefield…
Death-Knight-boy retaliates with some Hellfire…blowing away Squee…
And our losses raise to 8000…
Khut stands…wipes the blood off the back of his head…
Runs up to the top of the spire…“Hey asshole! Up here!”
And drops three arrows into the knight…blasting him to kingdom come…
Of course…there are still hordes of salt zombies and knights…
Ado drops an endless volley of flaming arrows on their heads…
Sorq follows it with FEAR…and a whole phalanx runs screaming…
Khut calls for his wife…
who has a divine-off with Ma’chek…and reports that she’s in the Deep Fade…
Khut tosses out death spores…Vadim plant-growths them…
And salt zombies turn into plant food…
To be continued…


And the author said, “This is good, this thing I have done.” And he went for lunch and a drink. And it was good!

- From the ramblings of Khut

The Exodus: Session 33

Khut's Feeling...

CARDS
Semek’s Wife
Oblivion Sept
Horgrim
Giggles

We are locked in Thaabanite territory…
The road goes west towards “Snake Mountain”…
To the east is the Kraken…
We’re running out of food…
Snakes are massing along the ridges…
Hoargrim comes complaining…
Squee starts piping up a swarm of lickens…
The nohai start eating like crazy…
A runner breaks in to the conversation…
Semek’s wife found an amazing kill but needs help…
Squee’s eyes light up with a waft of apples…
And a voice says “my stomach is bursting”…
In a sound like creaking tree branches…
Khut hands Squee, Vadim, Sorq, and Breaks some weed…
While he and the rest head out hunting…
Out in the wastes, we find Nohai surrounding…
Some horn-beast-like creatures with heavy forequarters…
Nohai run around hooting…
Giggles egging them on…
Semek’s wife and the malik cavalry push them off…
Khut walks into the middle of them and says “Mine”…
Ithunn glares…
To Ithunn, “I mean ours…”
Khut and Giggles man up for a challenge…
Khut rips Giggle’s throat out with his teeth…
Ithunn steps up and similarly drops Kitty…
Everyone else starts trying to do non-Nohai diplomacy…
Barruk drives sparky into the riot…
Bellowing for people to disperse…
Ado drops a Compulsion and tells everyone to go home…
And the Nohai leave…
Hooch and Fletcher dragging off Giggles and Kitty
Meanwhile in drug-land…they chat with a tree…
“There is a cracking in my roots…”
“Something afflicting all the spirits…”
“Something has been birthed in the verge…”
“Something that does not belong there…”
“A potentiality that was only possible before…”
“All I can see is a burning crown…”
“A circle of gold on fire like the sun…”
“There are two separate problems…”
“My roots are cracking because of the change…”
“And I need to put down my burden…”
“My roots don’t hold here any more…”
“I must set them down before my roots break free…”
“Or I need power…”
“I thrive off of Hope…”
We suggest turning north…
There is a Thaabanite ruin…possibly amalgan inhabited…
We have no maps that way…
And its marching into Russia in winter…
Literally…
And full of gods and demons according to legend…
Southwest would be into the badlands…
Back into northern Gavshahar…
As they drop out of drug-land…
They see roots spreading throughout the encampment…
We feel a pull…drawing life from the caravan…
We haul back the massive “Shoulderbeast”…
And hand it over to Hulagu to start butchering…
Collecting the bones to boil into broth…
And Vadim starts handing out Goodberries…
To feed up a large hunting party…
Squee and Khut notice Semek’s wife dosing the meat…
Hulagu suddenly turns and attacks Sorqutani…
Swinging at her with a poison-coated cleaver…
His hands seemingly moving independently…
Nohai start howling in pain…
It looks like the entire hunting party is jacked…
And poisoning the food…
Khut punches Semek’s Wife in the face…
Barruk drops darkness on the brain-jacked Malik…
Semek’s (angry) wife stabs Khut…
Khut – “I’ve got Semek’s Wife handled…”
Ithunn – “Who’s being handled?!”
Khut – “No actual handling is going on…”
Squee geas’s Hulagu…and tells him to stand down…
CHARM OFF!
An angry Malik charges her…and misses…
One horn on either side…
And she starts painting the horns pink…
Ithunn leaps in and bitch-slaps Semek’s Wife…
Then kicks her twice…sweeps her off her feet…
Khut stands back to watch…
“I dreamt of this…”
Ado Purifies the food…
and steps between Hulagu and Sorq…
A Malik charges him…
Ado grabs a horn and fakes his death…
Another Malik charges Squee and gores her…HARD…
Sorq pulls out her giant spear-like wand…
AND…cone of fear…
in the direction of everyone who’s being an idiot…
Semek’s wife and a Malik start running
around like they are on fire…
Hulagu wails on Sorqutani…and bursts into flames…
AND Sorqutani blows up into a giant fireball…
Nuking everyone…EVERYONE…
Vadim grabs her as she falls over…
“Sorq, do that again!”
A pack of cackles appears and piles onto Hulagu…
AND another pack drops a Malik…
Wow that’s a lot of cackles…
Barruk gives a demonstration of proper goring technique…
Slamming into the Malik on Squee and tossing him…
Squee geas’s another Malik…
“Don’t hit anyone and let me paint your horns…pink…”
He responds by beating her unconcious…
Khadagan comes hurtling in…
Lands on the wolf-pinned Hulagu…and starts clawing…
Three Malik charge Khut…who sidesteps and keeps staring…
Because…there is a catfight over there…seriously…
They block his view…
Two of them a promptly fall to the ground…
Sorq paralyzes Hulagu and a pair of Malik…
The cackles tear Hulahu up…and another Malik…
Vadim whistles for them to stop…
just before they rip out Hulagu’s throat…
Barruk vanishes out from between a pile of Malik…
Reappears in a pack of Nohai…
starts curing poisons left and right…
and purifies the rest of the food…
Barruk: “I’m fluent in Nohai now…”
Khadagan: “I picked up a little Nohai tongue in
the last year, but I can’t speak it at all…”
Khadagan drops another Malik…
Leaving four still standing…and two paralyzed…
Three of whom charge Khad…he laughs…
Semek’s Wife ganks Ithunn with a poisned knife…
Then gets kicked to the curb in response…
Khut stares happily…
And caves a Malik’s face in with an elbow…
Ado aggressively bane’s the remaining Malik…
And Sorqutani lights them up…
And the cackles come back and pile on them…
Taking one more down…
Then Sparky comes rampaging in…trampling another…
Khadagan, Khut, and Ithunn join in the beatings…
and there was one…
That gets killed and torn up by the cackles…
Ado challenges Fletcher to a race to the Yaghuth…
Cheats…wins…and comes back with some Yaghuth priests…
Sorq, Ado, and Barruk purify and cook all the meat…
and we drop a whole lot of healing on the Nohai…
Khut notices Ithunn stalking him around the camp…
“Are you following me?”…book comes up…upside down…
Khut runs off…fishes a bone out of the pot…
Cuts off a sliver…hollows out the marrow…
And drops it in Ithunn’s lap…
some weird kind of beast-bone promise ring…
probably should have let her have the marrow…
At least Drowned River is pleased…
Vadim: “Everyone needs to be bumping Semek’s Wife…”
Khut: “I am NOT bumping Semek’s Wife…”
DM: Bursts out laughing for five minutes…
Ado takes Hoargrim to go meet the Yaghuth…
And starts teaching Hoargrim mindfulness meditation…
ONLY Ado could pull this off…
Yaghuth would not go anywhere near the battlefield…
Hoargrim sees them as useless pacifists…
Yaghuth might serve as a possession-warning-system…
The best idea Hoargrim has heard in all morning…
Barruk sits down to chat with the general…
Discussing our recent set-backs and the need to improve morale…
Suggesting a tour of the units to meet the troops…
Time for Hoargrim to go shake babies and kiss hands…
Teaching Hoargrim the politics of leading troops…
Squee gives him a serious beard-braiding…
Like Marie Antoinette’s hair…but a beard…
Sorq starts pushing him on the idea of a magic-wielding unit…
Time for Breaks, Rust, and the Gray Lady to start teaching…
Start finding those with talent…make a mage academy…
Weavers, maggot-folk, crazy warblers, would-be shamans…
Vadim hauls Semek’s Wife and the malik north…
Then wakes them up with Goodberries…
Starts suggesting that they need to scout to the North…
The snakes paralyze you with a gaze…
Only the elders can subsume your will…
Regardless of desire, you’re not in control of your body…
They have massed armies in the hills…
Mountain Slithers…sand devils…snakes…
Vadim suggests taking Yaguth priests with each scouting party…
Then Vadim takes point on the first hunting/scouting trip…
Lays some protection from wiggins on Semek’s Wife…
Amazons and Yaghuth form jack-detection squads incoming scouts…
We get intel on Thaabanite patrols…
Mostly client races…fewer and fewer Phanin…
Largely avoiding the Amalgam ruins to the north…
Khadagan goes in to Hundreds of Dust…asks her to bless his chitin armor…


And the author said, “This is good, this thing I have done.” And he went for lunch and a drink. And it was good!

- From the ramblings of Khut

Beyond the Shore: Session 15

I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself … and so I know you.

I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea,
the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.

I leaned so …
and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now …
and then under the water and out again …
a fish … a bird … a fin thing … a wing thing.

Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing …
I have lived in many half worlds myself … and so I know you.

Carl Sandburg

---

Wednesday

Standing on the plateau in the late afternoon, over the bodies of their fallen foes, the party considered how best to get back to Rickety’s Squibs, knowing that by morning the mountaintop would likely be crawling with giant assembling for their weekly potluck. Standing on the edge, Leo pointed to the blue-brown line of the river as it meandered through the jungle, and noted that it emptied directly into the harbor by Rickety’s. “We’ve got a thousand feet of rope, we could build a raft…”

Thaduk suggested that the roof of Aaron’s small house in the stockade would be easy enough to remove for lumber (rather than felling a forest). Although it would require going off the trail they followed to get here and bushwhacking through the jungle, the party agreed to spend the night at Aaron’s stockade, then take the river. Then came the question of getting back down the mountain.

Rummy reminded them that the cave on the plateau supposedly connected to the ones lower down the mountain. Leo pulled out his spyglass and, scanning the mountain’s base, pointed out a lady giant carrying a kettle of water large enough for a man to lie down in up from the river towards the lowest cave entrance. This bit of information quickly squashed any notions of going through the mountain.

Instead they took off, jogging back down the trail by which they had come up. With Rummy taking point, Leo whistling a marching tune to keep everyone’s spirits up, and Thaduk carrying anyone who started to flag, they made it to Aaron’s stockade just before nightfall. Tired from hiking and fighting, they set watches and turned in early for the night.

Late into the third watch in the pre-dawn darkness, Thaduk and Sandara sat up talking. At Thaduk’s prodding, Sandara went into, very boring, detail about how she, almost by accident, became the chosen prophet of Besmara—covering her childhood in a small sea-side town in the New England colony, her love of the sea and of stories and plays featuring daring buccaneers, and of finding a small shrine to the patron Saint of Piracy in her local Catholic church and saying a prayer, not knowing that the previous prophet had died the night before.

As she droned on, Thaduk noticed an overly-large hand with long curled nails reach up to the top of the palisade behind her. A moment later, a pair of feral, hunch-backed giants peeked over the wall. Jumping to his feet, Thaduk glared at the giants and roared out a blistering tirade or Orcish threats and curses. The creatures froze, half-way over the wall, then turned tail and vanished back into the jungle. Sandara started at the sudden outburst and looked around hurriedly, but saw nothing. Everyone else came running out of the small house, jolted from their sleep. Thaduk explained what he had seen, and the others, since it was almost dawn and they were awake anyways, decided to get to work building the raft.

Thaduk asked Sandara if she could lend her experience as a sailor to the raft-building endeavor. “I thought you’d never ask,” she laughed. “It’s done.” She whipped her hat off her head and dropped it into the small spring bubbling out from between the roots of the large tree that canopied the stockade. As the water soaked into the felt, the hat began to grow and change, taking the form of a twenty-foot, single-masted longship large enough for a dozen people. Grabbing the prow she lightly lifted the hat boat, shook the water off, and placed the boat, er hat, back on her head.

That settled, they headed into the jungle, Thaduk and Rummy beating a track west towards where Leo had spotted the river. A ways into the woods, Rummy spotted a large number of dark tear-drop shaped masses hanging from the trees up ahead—like clusters of night-black bananas. “Bats,” Leo said simply.

Rummy tried to pick a path around the nesting flock, cautioning everyone to be as quiet as possible. As he turned to make a hissing reprimand of Thaduk, who has snapped a small twig, he tripped, stumbling over a large branch, on which had fallen a large coconut, and which was draped over a rock to create a natural lever. Rummy’s backside came down hard on the raised end of the branch and the coconut went sailing to strike into a cluster of the bats…

With barely audible, high-pitched shrieks, the startled flock burst into flight and began swarming, swirling in and around the party, buffeting them with their unusually large wings and making the occasional small, nipping bite—their anticoagulant saliva making the small wounds much bloodier than was to be expected. With a sharp whistle, Leo unleashed a gust of wind, blowing a mass of the bats out of the way and leaving a brief path open. They ran through the breech in the swarm and bolted for the river. Sandara through her hat into the water and dove, landing in the rapidly expanding boat and everyone else piled in behind her.

The river was broad, shallow, and muddy, but flowing in the right direction, with just enough drop to give the boat some speed. Luckily Sandara’s hat-boat also came with a few yards of sail and two sets of oars, so the party made a solid five knots heading downstream.

Leo took the helm, pulling out the map and trying to gauge where they had left the aurified meiolania, while using message spells to chat up Jessica. He praised her beauty, asked how she liked life at sea, and learned that she was surprisingly fond of the former captain—mostly because of what he had not done after kidnapping them all (i.e. not raping her), than for how he actually treated them.

Thaduk, meanwhile, pulled out a spear leaned over the back of the boat, trying to skewer one of the large, broad-finned fish which were swimming in its wake. As he stabbed, the fish dodged, not sideways or down, but up, leaping out of the water, over the shaft of the spear, and right at Thaduk’s face. Thaduk flinched and the fish went right past his head to land flopping on the floor of the boat, where he quickly pounded its head in with his fist. Leo identified the fish as an onwu azu, a piranha like fish known as the “flying death” by locals.

The water around them began to churn, as more of the fish became agitated. Singing with all his might, Leo calmed the waters. While normally this would have been bad, and should have made it easier for the fish to leap, the shear force of Leo’s song made the surface of the river as flat and smooth as glass—an almost impenetrable barrier of surface tension. The small boat sailed on without further molestation by the carnivorous piscines and landed at the point Leo estimated to be nearest their giant golden turtle sometime just after noon.

They tied off the boat and trekked inland, soon locating their prize. The golden turtle was truly massive, almost three meters long and weight in at nearly twenty tons. After numerous discussions about how they might move the thing—cutting it up, building pulley systems, and other less reasonable approaches—Leo pointed out his trump card. His spell of buoyancy could easily affect an object of the turtle’s volume irrespective of weight, so as long as they could get it to the river, he could float it.

Rummy pointed out that they had a flask of quickfreeze oil, not much, but enough to maybe slide the thing. Every got to work. They hacked down all the tree between the turtle and the river. Thaduk and Adriana took a couple of palms and used them as rollers to flatted out all the smaller vegetation along their desired path. The girls, meanwhile, hauled bucket after bucket of water up from the river (being careful not to rile up the man-eating fish again) and sluiced the path, soaking the flattened vegetation and turning the ground into thick, slick mud.

Once the path was prepared, Leo made sure the boat was out of the way and Rummy iced the muddy ground right in front of the golden turtle. Everyone got on one side and started pushing. Adriana and Thaduk raged-out and heaved. Slowly, ever so slowly, the twenty-ton lump of gold started to budge.

Inch by excruciating inch, they began to slide the massive object. Rummy, who had apparently been exposed to curling in the northern Empire before migrating to Nova Britannia, ran around to the front and began sweeping the ice with a broom hastily made from pine branches. Finally, with a last screaming heave from Thaduk that nearly threw his back out, the turtle was tipped over onto its back went sliding quickly down the muddy slope towards the river, picking up more and more speed as it went. The massive, fast-moving turtle shot off the bank and went sailing a good twenty feet out into the river. It landed with a mighty splash, sending a fourty-foot column of water into the air—nearly swamping the small hat-boat, and raining down hundreds of dead fish.

The party piled into the boat and rowed out to where the turtle sank. After a few minutes of poking about, they struck gold (literally) and Leo’s buoyancy spell brought it up to the surface. They tied it off and started tugging it downriver.

By nightfall, the party, quite exhausted from their efforts retrieving the turtle, sailed into the harbor at Rickety’s Squibs. Leo jumped ashore and ran to the tavern, announcing their triumphal return and immediately breaking into a rousing retelling of their fight against giants—mostly to keep everyone in the tap room and distracted. While he did this, the others tugged the turtle to the remains of the Ginger Belle, just west of the shipyard. The large ship was careened on its side, half in the water, and a large hole cut in the side from where it was being cannibalized for parts. They stashed the golden turtle in the water-logged hold of the careened ship, then returned to the tap room to join the festivities.

Inside the tavern, Leo bought a round of drinks for the house. He then called over Thaduk and the girls and continued his story, encouraging Thaduk to play the role of the Puritans and giants, adding his intimidating stature to the retelling.


While the storytelling and bragging continued, Rummy slipped back out, with the bound and gagged Badger Medlar in toe, and went to the warehouse to round up Fishguts. He sent Fishguts to the Ginger Belle, then grabbed a cross-cut saw from the shipyard and dragged Badger out to the wreck.

As the party raged in the tap room, screams filled the night. The old woman hung upside down from the careened ship’s beam. The sawing was slow, painfully slow, and no amount of gagging or wadding could drown out the old woman’s screams. Fishguts watched and Rummy pressed on with his act of execution.

The saw caught and bit—tailbone, pelvis, spine, ribs. By the ribs, at least, the screaming had stopped. Rummy sawed and sawed. Blood soaked every inch of his clothes, filled his boots, drenched his arms, splattered his face. Rummy’s mind was filled with the gleeful telepathic pleadings of the gelatinous monster at his back—an unending stream of blasphemies.

Finally the saw breached the woman’s jaw, then the skull split and the two halves of what had been Badger Medlar fell free, swinging independently. These were soon devoured by the thing that had been Fishguts. Rummy laid down his saw and stripped, tossing the soiled clothes to Fishguts to be devoured along with the corpse, then headed back to the warehouse. Mentally signalling to his pet demon that it should keep watch over their golden prize.

Cleaned and dressed, outwardly at least, Rummy rejoined his friends at the tap room. Leopold had finished his tale and turned his attentions to more aggressively wooing Jessica. A few more drinks, a few more compliments and the two of them were walking out the door, arm in arm, heading for “somewhere private”.

Leo and Jessica were met at the door by an irate and clearly drunk Tilly Bracket, who, while she had not been able to listen in on their unspoken conversation, was clearly outraged that Leo would be slinking off with someone other than herself. And, of course, she already had her brass knuckles on. Two punches later, Leo’s face was barely recognizable.

Leo did some quick talking, or as best he could manage given his dislocated jaw, and suggested that really, Rummy was the better looking of the two of them anyways and Tilly shouldn’t have to put up with his philandering bullshit. Tilly gave Rummy an appraising look over Leo’s shoulder. Rummy flashed a freshly opened bottle of plum wine at the notorious lush and she quickly brushed Leo off and joined Rummy at the bar.

With the dangerous woman thus distracted, Leo tried to get Sandara to heal his face, but was met by an angry rant about him taking advantage of an young, innocent, disabled girl. Jessica, however, seemed impressed by Leo’s taking a beating on her behalf (probably because she was unable to hear any of the relevant exchange) and quickly led him out of the tap room, laying many a kiss and healing spell over him.

Rummy and Tilly polished off the bottle of wine quickly. “So,” Rummy said, “you ever had sex on top of a giant solid-gold turtle?” The cougar never needs so much invitation from its prey, and the two of them quickly followed Leo and Jessica out of the tap room.

On the way out, the plate-clad shape of Guillaume caught Rummy’s eye and threw him an appreciately obscene gesture before rising from its seat. Rummy tried to telepathically explain to the demon that Tilly was not married, but Guillaume insisted that having the same sexual partner every night for a month clearly indicated some level of unspoken pact, and that was enough to slate his need to see a woman be unfaithful. Sighing, Rummy allowed the demon to follow Tilly and him to the wreckage of the Ginger Belle to watch them fucking on the biggest mass of gold any of them could imagine.

Not one to be left out, a drunken Thaduk approached Sandara and made a pass at her. The elven priestess considered the orc’s advance for a while, then led him outside to the docks. She stuffed a pair of pipes with some skunk-smelling, strangely wet tobacco and handed him one. For all that it stank, the rum-soaked tobacco was delicious, and the two friends sat quietly staring at the stars and smoking late into the night.

To be continued…

Beyond the Shore: Session 16

You have to be always drunk.
That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way.
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time,
that breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
you have to be continually drunk.

But on what?
Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish.
But be drunk.

And if sometimes,
on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch,
in the mournful solitude of your room,
you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone,
ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock,
everything that is flying,
everything that is groaning,
everything that is rolling,
everything that is singing,
everything that is speaking. . .
ask what time it is
and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:
“It is time to be drunk!
So as not to be the martyred slaves of time,
be drunk, be continually drunk!
On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Charles Baudelaire, 1864

---

Thursday
The party was awakened at the crack of dawn by the sounds of angry shouting and people running near the docks. Leo, sleeping on the beach with Jessica, opened his eyes to see a large Spanish War-Galleon, complete with three full decks of guns and showing signs of recent battle, anchored in the harbor. A small launch was rowing for shore, holding eight buccaneers wearing plague-masks and a man dressed in the uniform of an Imperial naval captain.

Given the mismatch between the men in the launch and the Spanish colors of the galleon, Leo figured that the ship was probably here for the same reason they were—to be squibed so its original owners would not recognize it. The local squibs, however, were massing along the docks, armed with all manner of violent implements. Clearly some breach of etiquette had occurred—probably with regards to the privacy that Rickety promised his clients—and things were about to get ugly.

Leo messaged Rummy and Thaduk to apprise them of the situation, and sent Jessica running back to the warehouse to shake the crew out of their bunks. Rummy, stretched and cracked his back—it turns out that a giant solid-gold turtle does not make a comfortable bed—and rolled over to find Tilly gone, a pile of dead fish in her place, and all of his gear missing as well. Determined not to be shamed by her, he proudly walked out of the ruined ship, shoulders back, head high, and stark naked, and paraded right past the massed squibs and his crew into the warehouse to look for a spare pair of pants.

Thaduk, better rested than the other two, having actually slept in his own bunk, came out of the warehouse and shoved his way through the crowd of squibs to stand by Leo at the head of the dock were the launch was pulling up. Nine sailors climbed out of the launch, one tying it off while the rest formed a defensive line, four kneeling and four standing behind, with muskets readied. Once the boat was stable, the captain, a little shaky on a crude wooden prosthesis and dressed in classic Imperial Navy style, climbed up onto the docks.

Leo, with his vast expertise in sailing lore, immediately recognized the captain as Merril Pegsworthy, a former navy-man and a member of the Free Captains (the ruling council of the Republic). Captain Pegsworthy told his men to stand down and hobbled forward a few steps to address Leo, who appeared to be as in charge as anyone there—and probably was given that the party had hunted down and killed one of the squib’s foremen and turned the other into a demon. It was then that Leo noticed a small woman, not more than 9 inches tall, sitting on the old pirate’s shoulder much as a parrot might.

“That’s your boat I assume?” the captain said, indicating the Sadness where it rested in the drydock. He went on to apologize profusely—helped in no small part by Thaduk’s ominous presence alongside fifty-odd angry shipwrights—and explained that the watchtower on the headlands had failed to signal that there was already a ship present at the Squibs. Everyone looked and, unlike when the Sadness had arrived, there were no warning flags flying from the lookout tower.

Leo ordered a couple of the squibs to go check out the watchtower. Thaduk suggested that perhaps the giants they’d been pissing off lately had done something to the lookout, and offered to go as well. Thaduk and the squibs piled into a boat and he rowed them across the harbor to the headland. Of course, the watchtower was at the top of a pretty sheer thirty-foot cliff.

“How you get up?” Thaduk asked the squibs.

“We take the road…” they replied, pointing the mile and a half trail that led from the small village to the headland. Thaduk shrugged and jumped. The boat rocked hard as he launched off, nearly swamping the squibs, and he caught the ledge of the cliff and pulled himself up.

The watchtower was a simple wooden platform anchored to a trio of loblolly trees growing close together, with a slanted roof (also anchored to the trees) and no railing, accessed by a simple rope ladder. Crouching just on the other side of the trees was a misshapen degenerate with its back to Thaduk. The creature’s heavy breathing and the occasional sound of cracking bones covered the sound Thaduk’s landing. With a grunt it haphazardly tossed something over its shoulder to land at Thaduk’s feat.

A human arm.

Creeping up, Thaduk jumped and brought both hands down in a double-fisted strike on the back of the thing’s neck, right where the spine meets the skull, knocking it out cold. Next to the giant was the battered and bloody body of an older man. The left arm of his jacket was pinned up, as if the limb had been lost long ago, while the right was completely missing. Thaduk grabbed his spear and shish-kebabbed the unconscious giant, then turned to inspecting the man’s body more closely.

The corpse reeked of booze. Stale, old booze, like Thaduk the Sot after he’d been passed out for a day. The strange angle at which the body lay, the blood covering its head, and the way its neck had broken made Thaduk think that the lookout had died, not from a giant’s attack, but from getting completely sloshed and falling out of the watchtower. He climbed up to the platform and looked around. There was an empty case of their own plum wine, a bedroll, a well-made spiked iron club, and a small chest containing a spyglass, signal flares, torches, and a collection of flags.

Thaduk stashed the morningstar in his bag of holding, then lit one of the torches and waved it in the direction of the docks to indicate an “all clear” to those waiting. He then unhooked the rope ladder, slid down one of the trees, and lowered the ladder to the squibs waiting in the boat. When the squibs reached the top, he climbed back up the tree and put the ladder back.

The squibs identified the corpse as belonging to Lyle Goodwin. “You three stay. Keep lookout.” Thaduk told them. He then took the trail back to the squib village, moving slowly to look for other signs of giants — though he now suspected the one he’d killed had only been an opportune scavenger, rather than any intentional threat.

Rummy meanwhile, had found a pair of pants and headed for the taproom, where he, unsurprisingly, found Tilly and asked her where she put his stuff. “I left it right beside you,” she said. Sighing he hiked back to the Ginger Belle and dug through the stinking pile of rotting fish until he found his dress, weapons, and other gear. He rinsed them off as best he could in the harbor, then headed back to the tavern.

“Thanks Tilly,” Rummy said, giving her a big hug to show that there were no hard feelings. She gave him a squeeze back, then he felt something strange on the back of his dress. He slipped a hand free, grabbed the “Fireball me” sign she’d stuck there and managed to afix it to her shirt before excusing himself to finally go join Leo.

Thaduk met them shortly thereafter and explained what he found at the watchtower. Runners went and fetched Rickety Hake, who, at nearly hundred years old was not one to wake up early for anything. Hearing about what happened to Lyle he groaned miserably and headed off to tell Lyle’s wife. Rummy agreed to go with Rickety for morale support, while the Leo and Thaduk chatted with Captain Pegsworthy.

Captain Pegsworthy again apologized profusely and offered to take his ship out and return in a few weeks, vowing not to tell a soul what he’d seen in the dry-dock. Leo and Thaduk laughed off and invited him and his crew to join them for a drink in the taproom. He ordered his men to row back out to the galleon and tell everyone to come ashore, warning them to leave their weapons on the ship to avoid provoking anything further.

As they walked to the tavern, Pegsworthy recognized the not-yet fully squibbed outline of the Red Sadness and was pleased to see someone “pull one over on old Captain Herrera”.

“Put one through him you mean.”

Clearly very pleased by this, Pegsworthy asked for the honor of Christening their ship once it was finished.

Rummy, meanwhile, followed Rickety to one of the small huts that housed the Squib’s workers. Red curtains hung in the windows and the door had been removed and replaced by strands of red beads. Rickety knocked. The response was a high, breathy groan and a panted “be with you in a minute”. A minute later, a squib came running out of the curtain, hurriedly pulling on his trousers and the voice yelled “Come in.”

Inside, the hut looked to have been converted to a small temple-cum-brothel. Niche-like shelves lined every wall, filled with dozens of statues of depicting the various gods of the Catholic church, each with an offering bowl in front of it. Rummy recognized only a few of these, picking out shrines to a few gods represented in his book (Tittivilla, Tittivilus, Babi, Belial, and Baphomet) as well as a few more common deities such as Chris, Vesta, and the ‘God of Abraham’. Aside from the many shrines, there was a large bed, a small chest with a plank on the top for a table, and a small cook-stove.

Lying on the bed was an attractive middle-aged woman, completely naked and rather damp and sticky-looking. Rickety immediately set to trying to explain the death of her husband, with much hemming, hawing, apologizing, and not getting to the actual point. The woman, who’s name was Chandra, seemed to take it all very well, until Rickety mentioned the giant. Only then did she become emotional, not about her husband’s death, but a screaming tirade about how she knew bringing a “fucking Puritan” on would be trouble, and how the giants had only been a minor problem before, and how no amount of being friendly with giants could offset the Puritan’s heresies.

Rummy tried to ask what Puritans had to do with giants, and why everyone railed about one when the other was mentioned, explaining that he knew next to nothing about religion. Chandra, looked him up and down, and quickly changed the subject, spreading her legs and asking if he would like to “get some religion”. He excused himself, explaining that he was “kindof in a relationship” now, but that he had a friend who might be interested in some “religion”.

Chandra suggested that he might at least want to leave an offering for the gods. Rummy tossed a few coins into the bowls for the gods from his book, which prompted a raised eyebrow from the priestess-cum-prostitute and an inquisitive “Are you sure you don’t want some religion?”

Meanwhile, in the taproom, Leo and Thaduk were putting on their two-man reenactment of the party’s adventures, though Leo’s performance was a little flat. When Rummy walked in, the three of them sat down at a table with Pegsworthy and his tiny lady-friend, who, on closer inspection was clearly a sprite or pixie or some similar variety of winged faerie-kin. They traded stories for a bit, until, again, the story turned to their recent fight against the giants and Pegsworthy interjected with the now-typical response of “Fucking Puritans!”

Unlike all the priests they’d met though, Pegsworthy was willing to elaborate when Leo burst out when the party asked why everyone said it like that. The Puritans, he explained, were a sect of monotheists, taking their name from the idea that worshiping one god was somehow more “pure” than the “thirty-thousand give or take” that the state-sponsored Catholic Church recognized. The “one god” worshiped by the Puritans was the god of the giants, so, all giants were Puritans by default, and all non-giant Puritans tended to be very buddy-buddy with any giants living in their area. And “of course,” he said, “the Puritans are into all other kinds of heresy, like saying people can come back from the dead without drowning."

After that, Thaduk brought out a case of plum wine and they got to drinking in earnest. Leo mentioned that they were short on crewmen and asked if Pegsworthy would be willing to spare any. He agreed that they were free to approach any of the men he’d brought with him, as he had just recruited a large number of men when he took the galleon. Rummy made some smack-talk about how they offered full shares to all members of the crew and he might risk loosing everyone he brought, to which Pegsworthy only laughed and said that he did the same, “except for Zarina”, he said indicating the fairy perched on his shoulder, “she gets three”.

Intrigued that the fairy would be worth so much, Leo challenged Captain Pegsworthy to a drinking content, in hopes that, sufficiently drunk, he might reveal what role the fairy served on his crew that would be so important. The content hardly counted as such, except as a cheating contest. Thaduk pounded the drinks back without blinking. Rummy hardly drank, vanishing most of his shots. The captain drank, but somehow seemed to become stone-cold-sober again with every two or three shots. Finally Leo spotted the shoulder-fairy throwing tiny grains of sparkling dust into his cups as he raised them to his lips.

Calling the captain on the drink-doctoring, he offered a re-match, calling for Zarina to lace the entire next round with the pixie-dust panacea she’d been tossing into his. Zarina flew a ring over the drinks, dusting them all. Everyone drank and was returned to a miraculous state of sobriety. Zarina flitted down to the table and made a tinkling, bell-like noise, which Pegsworthy translated as her desiring to participate and needing another glass.

Leo poured the next round. Everyone drank. And the entire party promptly passed out.

They were awakened less than a half-hour later to Pegsworthy’s crew dancing around the taproom singing a rousing chorus.

Chorus:
Hey ho!
Imagine the places that we’ll go
No one can stop us when we’re so high
In the stratosphere
Hey ho!
We’ll be the freighter that plunders
Every one of the world’s seven wonders
When we’re up in the skies,
For who can fight a frigate that flies?
No one can fight a frigate that flies!

Rummy wondered aloud at the song and how a ship could fly. Leo pointed out that the Imperial Aerial Corps occasionally used dragons to air-lift ships, and some recent research by a man in London regarding filling large silk bags with heated air. Zarina cut off the speculation by doing a once-around the table, dusting the glasses, and causing them to levitate slightly. Leo locked eyes with Captain Pegsworthy, “You said we could poach anyone you brought right…”

“She’s her own woman. If you can make her a better offer, you’re free to try.”

Zarina made a tinkling noise. Leo not understanding, cast share language and tried to give her the ability to speak English. She tinkled again, then flew close to his ear, at which point he realized that she had been speaking English the whole time, just in a voice that was too tiny to properly understand. “Four shares,” the pixie demanded.

“We’ll give you five!” Rummy said.

There was some argument from Thaduk and Leo, until Rummy pointed out that he was quartermaster on their ship and managing their loot was his responsibility. He rose and invited Zarina to follow him out. The two of them walked down the shore to where the Ginger Belle lay. Rummy showed her the giant golden turtle—prompting a series of very quick tests by the faerie alchemist to validate its authenticity—which clearly made an impression. “And I get five shares?”

Rummy then said he needed to introduce her to a couple of the more unusual members of their crew before she made a decision. He called Fishguts and Guillaume out of the shadows. “Oh, demons,” she tinkled, then flew over and began tinkling to Fishguts (who telepathically informed Rummy that she was apparently fluent in infernal), asking a slew of questions of the demonic entities to verify the party’s stories. Finally she flew bag and shook Rummy’s finger. “Ok, I’m in…”

Meanwhile, Leo and Thaduk made their way around the tavern: interviewing, singing, cajoling, growling, and offering full shares and signing bonuses, until fourteen of the men from Captain Pegsworthy’s crew had signed on.

To be continued…

---

The Exodus: Session 32

Khut is feeling...

CARDS:
Ganbaatar
Brotherhood of Evil: Orbghuz Forktongue joins the Empty Circle

We are back at camp, having pissed off both snakes and bugs…
Our army is badly wounded and in the middle of a raging war…
We form a council of war with Ganbaatar, Hundreds, and Hoargrim…
Ganbaatar is retraining Malik to ride slithers…
Casualties in the last battle are shockingly low…
For the ass-whupping we took…
We’ve got 500 visitor sand-devils…
Of questionable (or non-existent) loyalty…
We sacrificed a bunch of deathworm eggs…
To create a bumper-crop of baby warblers…
Thebanites (snakes) are to the west…
Something is ringing the desert like a drum…
Sorq apparently got fed royal-jelly and is spouting flies…
As the new black super-node (a.k.a. queen)…
The black ants are friendly(ish) but scared…
We need to smuggle the eggs past the snakes…
Khad throws some herbs on the fire to talk to the Gardener…
The yurt is overgrown with flowers and vines…
Blue smoke flowing up to the cieling…
Squee chases a whisp around the room…
The bees are hibernating, not a good time to be abroad…
Ado asks if the gardener could hide blacks in the fade…
Vadim suggests we dive into the fade and sneak past…
There are some concerns about the scale…
Gardener says he can hold “rot them” and hold them…
So they can “sprout in a new place”…
But will need “Her help”…
ADO: “What if we call she who shall not be named?”
Vadim: “Ivy?”
ADO: “SHE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED!”
Sorq suggests calling a meeting of accord with S’t’t’t’t’t…
And then pulling them into the Fade for a chat…
Ado goes to chat with the head weaver, Ruven…
Who is wrapping twine in and around…
Like a five-dimensional Rubic’s cube…
Sorq: “Ruven’s Cube”…
Ado: “What would make this interesting?”
Khad: “Because being high and watching a guy weave
a five-dimensional basket isn’t interesting enough”
Ado casts Plant Growth…
And gets picked up the head by an apple-smelling woman…
She says she can help…
We get ready to go…
Ellen-Dear drops a triple-fabricate for the caravan’s craftsmen…
Makes a pile of new saddles and fittings for the cavalry…
And wheels and struts for the wagons…
Arandyr heads west to scout the Thebanites…
They are camped out on bluffs to the west…entrenched…
Massive snake-muscled behemoths pounding on the sand…
Trying to summon some death worms…
She comes back dragging one of those drum-hammers…
Khut runs out looking for a way to flank the snakes to the north…
He runs full speed, sneakily, without rhythm…
And that hill starts to unwind…A giant tentacle…
sliding, sliding, sliding…beneath the sand…
Clearly the Thebanites are where they are to attract the thing…
Khut decides the best move is to shoot it…
MEANWHILE…
Sorq gives some regurgitated-ant-food to the minotaur cavalry…
Ado takes Ganbaatar out for a hunting trip to exercise the slithers…
They return empty-handed…
Squee gives them a little performance to boost their spirits…
Vadim and Khadagan cobble together some uber-drugs…
With the plan of tempting the snakes to jack our crazy minds…
(grants +3 bonus on checks to resist getting jacked by snakes)
(and makes the smoker bat-shit crazy)
And Khadagan raises some fungus zombies to reinforce our infantary…
Sorqutani walks out into the desert, spreads her arms wide…
The smell of lavender and apples wafts on the breeze…
The bees pour out of their hives…
Settling on her like black and gold armor…
In the distance, a farm-girl leans on a picket fence…
The sand erupts…ants swarming up a black-barked apple tree…
And strait into the Verge…
AND Sorq feels a sudden burning flash of cinnamon…
and her fingers burst into blue-white flames…
Khut shoots the worm…a mile long worm…and whistles for Littlewing…
“Exeunt pursued by sand kraken!”
We hit the road…moving fast on refitted wagons and beasts…
Altan humming happily amid bags and bags of looted treasure…
Khut comes flying in, the worlds biggest duststorm on his tail…
A massive thunderhead building…
Ado asks the Gray Lady if we can open the spire and let out the dead…
“They’ll need bodies…”
They can have ours when they fall…
Rust comes to Khadagan for black lotus on Gray Lady’s behalf…
The Caravan heads for the center of the Thebanite army…
Sand-devel cavalry on slithers…giant burly snakes with hammers…
Hoargrim sends our sand-devils out ahead to warn them that “its coming”…
Vadim shouts with the voice of the storm…
And throws down seven chunks of gold for the white-tent snakes…
“Take these if you wish to contact us in the future…”
WE CHARGE…and Vadim lights up a six-foot bong…
The cavalry are hit from behind by mind-controlled members of the caravan…
So the nohai scouts chow down on the traitors…
Their seven Phanin take over our cavalry’s inds…
We toke up and charge them…
Khut, still in the air, picks out S’t’t’t’t’t and shoots him in the head…
They start dancing, snaking and weaving through the sand…
S’t’t’t’t’t’s wounds start healing at an insanely rapid pace…
Sorq unleashes some fire…
Ado fires a warbler arrow into the air…which turns into a volley…
And death rains down en masse…
S’t’t’t’t yells “END IT” and our own cavalry charge us…
Vadim calls some lightning down on S’t’t’t’t’s head…
Suddenly Ado and Sorq are terrified…
AND Arandyr decides to kill Ado…
AND Squee decides it would be fun to drive Khadagan insane…
Khut: “I’m high and I’m angry! Come get some!”
And he leaps headlong off a Holy Mountain Beast’s nose…
And slaughters two of the priests wholesale…
Then Squee drops a pink tiara OF MADNESS on Khadagan…
Ellen-Dear rolls out four tiny metal figurines…
Which stand up, animate, and charge…
So do the bodies of the two dead priests…
And the beatings commence…
Arandyr misty-steps up and shiv’s Ado…
Right between the arm-pit, and he dies…unconvincingly…
She misses him again and again…
and finally believe’s he’s dead…
A second shot from Khut hits S’t’t’t’t right between the eyes…
Sorq steps up aaaand…PIXIES!
“I don’t super-charge, I make things bigger and longer…”
Ado locks down two of the remaining ones with a Hypnotic Pattern…
The gnawing pixies tear their attention away…
Vadim drops a lightning bolt on their heads…
Then stomps one down with his HMB…
Khadagan stands staring at the pretty colors…
Squee pokes him, fixes the tiara, and says “Kill something”…
AND he leaps on Ellen-Dear…to surprisingly little effect…
Arandyr sees Ado up and moving and starts stabbing some more…
Khad drops another one with an arrow in the eye…leaving one…
Sorq unleashes some more fire at the remaining one…
And a stray bolt of lightning from the storm finishes him off…
With the Phanin dead, our cavalry, in disarray, turn and rejoin us…
The Gray Lady and Rust do their thing…
The spire opens…
Golden light pours down from the sky…
Things stand up across the battlefield…
Golden marks on their foreheads, wings on their backs…
Their weapons shedding glowing light…
Accompanied by completely alien music…
(Western choral music)…
Meanwhile tentacles come slithering around the battlefield…
The warbler archers rain death on their cavalry…
And the spire opens again…and the glowing army grows…
Their infantry charges our cavalry, gets cut off by the shroom-zombies…
THEN The Kraken catches up to the fight…
The glowing armies of the spire turn and charge the Kraken…
They fly towards the kraken, reveling, screaming ancient cries…
Khut swings up onto littlewing’s back and divebombs it with a lance…
And gets backhanded and sent flying…
Littlewing (intelligent creature that she is) bugs out…
Our cavalry break through the lines and run for the mountains…
The Thaabanite slingers mow down our infantry as they follow…
Lightning begins to fall among the troops…
Vadim raises a wall of wind to cut off their archers…
Hoargrim and his stack break through and flee to higher ground…
The warblers mow down the Thaabanite cavalry…
The spire breaks through and their slingers run as well…
Their infantry smack down the warblers, then run…
The glowing angelic horde holds our back…


And the author said, “This is good, this thing I have done.” And he went for lunch and a drink. And it was good!

- From the ramblings of Khut

Sample Custom Class: The Apokrykleft

So, I posted a thing about using the Player's Option rules to mod a system for creating custom classes. Here is another post wherein I will throw out some crazy examples of AD&D 2nd-edition compatible classes built using that system. While the previous three were built using the Paladin experience chart (the second slowest chart in 2e AD&D, and thus one of the most point-friendly under the system), this one was built to use the Rogue advancement (the fastest and lowest point chart)...

The Apokrykleft

Literally ‘stealers of the arcane’, the Apokrykleft are agents of the unspoken gods of knowledge. The Apokrykleft’s goal is not to teach or to spread knowledge, but to find the most interesting secrets and return them to the god’s temples – preferably intact. A tome of absolute crawling evil sits at the bottom of this dungeon? The Apokrykleft isn’t going to destroy it. She’s going to steal it and get it back to her underground temple library where she and her peers will properly read it and write several research papers on it. She doesn’t much care that it will release some terrible creature into the world. All that matters is that knowledge, in any form, is found and then hidden again. Hoarded away from any save the Apokryklefts and their god.

Base Class Statistics:

• Ability Requirements: Int 12, Wis 12, Dex 9
• Alignments: Any Non-Lawful
• Experience Chart: As Thief
• Hit Dice: d4
• Hit Points per level beyond 9th: +1 per level
• THAC0: as Rogue
• Saves: Mixed
  • Paralyzation/Poison/Death: as Priest
  • Rods/Staves/Wands: as Priest
  • Petrification/Polymorph: as Priest
  • Breath Weapon: as Priest
  • Spell: as Priest
• Proficiencies:
  • Weapons, Initial: 1
  • Weapons, Advancement: +1 per 4 levels
  • Non-Weapon, Initial: 4
  • Weapons, Advancement: +1 per 4 levels
• Non-weapon Group Crossovers: General, Rogue, Priest
• Allowed Weapons: Any available to Wizards
• Allowed Armor: Studded leather or lighter, no shields

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Class Features:

Code of Ethics: While by no means a lawful order, at least where the laws of nations are concerned, the Apokryklefts have their code of conduct which they must adhere to. The tenets of their faith can be thusly summarized:

• Never burn paper. Never reuse paper. The written word may retain a secret and a secret lost is a heresy.
• Build libraries in His name. Vast libraries. But beneath the earth, behind locked doors, where the books are kept safe from the loose hands of the uninitiated.
• Go into the world, teach all to read, so if they learn of a secret, they bring it to Him.
• No secret is too small. Or too big. Or too profane.
• In Death, He will grant his people salvation in knowledge of the secrets of the cosmos. All truths shall be revealed.
• And the most important tenet of faith: One must never utter the god’s True Name, for that is the Ultimate Secret. His old names are dead. Now, His name will forever be the Unspoken.

Limited Magic Items: Magic is a particularly great secret, and written magic more so, and one the Apokryklefts must never allow to go to waste. An Apokrykleft may never make use of any written magic item (scrolls, tomes, manuals, etc.), for fear of them being expended and destroyed, and must donate all such items to his temple library.

Weapons and Armor: Apokryklefts spend much of their time in their hidden libraries, their heads buried in books of forbidden lore, looking for clues as to the next secret to be stolen, and very little time training for combat. Still, theirs in often a dangerous line of work. Apokryklefts learn the basics of self-defense, they fight as rogues and may wear armor up to studded leather and make use of any weapons available to wizards (Dagger, Dart, Knife, Quarterstaff, or Sling).

Secret Language: As masters of hidden lore, Apokryklefts keep a unique language, known only to members of their order, permitting secure communication between members of the class in almost any setting. All Apokryklefts gain knowledge of this language (called Apokrykleftis) for free at 1st level. In addition, all Apokryklefts gain the ability to read and write both Apokrykleftis and their native language for free.

Thief Skills:
Apokryklefts are thieves of knowledge. They learn a number of skills useful in seeking out, acquiring, and understanding diverse unique bits of lore. All of these abilities start with a base score of 10% at 1st level (plus the normal modifiers for race, dexterity, or armor). Each level after 1st, the Apokrykleft gains 15 points with which to improve these abilities as they see fit.

• Detect Curse: The Apokrykleft is aware of the horrible curses lurking within tombs and ancient magical items. If the Apokrykleft comes within 10 feet of a cursed item, location, or person, he has a chance to sense the baneful magic. The Apokrykleft does not learn the details of the curse, he is only aware of its presence. If the Apokrykleft fails to detect a curse in a given item, he must gain a level before he is allowed to try again. The Apokrykleft’s chance to Detect Curse improves by +2% per point of Wisdom over 13.
• Detect Illusions: Apokryklefts have a chance to see illusions within their line of sight, up to 90 feet away. They perceive the illusion as a translucent image, seeing through it as though it were a light mist. The more real the illusion, the more solid the image. This ability cannot penetrate invisibility or other non-visible effects.
  Detection is not automatic, and the Apokrykleft must spend a round concentrating on the area of effect to discover its illusionary qualities. Knowing that something is an illusion is not necessarily a fail-safe defense against illusionary magic, such as in the case of a simulacrum. The Apokrykleft’s chance to Detect Curse improves by +2% per point of Intelligence over 13.
• Find/Remove Traps: Many people try to protect their important secrets from Apokryklefts with mechanical or magical traps or alarms. Unlike mundane thieves’, the Apokrykleft is well trained in dealing with magical traps and does not halve his percentages when working with such arcane devices.
  To find a trap, the Apokrykleft must be able to touch and inspect the trapped object. Normally, the DM rolls the dice to determine whether the Apokrykleft finds a trap. If the Apokrykleft finds a trap, he knows its general principle but not its exact nature. An Apokrykleft can check a given item for traps once per experience level. Searching for a trap takes 1d10 rounds.
  Once a trap is found, the Apokrykleft can try to remove it or disarm it. This also requires 1d10 rounds. If the dice roll indicates success, the trap is disarmed. If the dice roll indicates failure, the trap is beyond the Apokrykleft’s current skill. He can try disarming the trap again when he advances to the next experience level. If the dice roll is 96-100, the Apokrykleft accidentally triggers the trap and suffers the consequences.
• Legend Lore: As collectors of knowledge, the Apokrykleft has a chance to identify the general purpose, function, and history of any magical item he comes across, just like a Bard. The Apokrykleft need not handle the item but must examine it closely. Scrutiny takes 1d10 rounds, after which a percentile roll is made. The exact information revealed is up to the DM. The Apokrykleft draws upon history, rumors, and clues based on the item’s construction to gain this information. Typical information revealed includes the item’s history, maker, name, and other less technical aspects. Information such as the number of pluses, exact command words, etc., are rarely learned.
• Open Locks: An Apokrykleft can try to pick padlocks, finesse combination locks, and solve puzzle locks (locks with sliding panels, hidden releases, and concealed keyholes). Picking a padlock requires tools. Using typical thief’s tools grants normal chances for success. Using improvised tools (a bit of wire, a thin dirk, a stick, etc.) imposes a penalty on the character’s chance for success. The amount of time required to pick a lock is 1d10 rounds. An Apokrykleft can try to pick a particular lock only once per experience level. If the attempt fails, the lock is simply too difficult for the character until he learns more about picking locks (goes up a level).
• Read Languages: By virtue of their profession, Apokryklefts tend to learn odd bits of information. Among these is the ability to read various languages, particularly as they apply to treasure maps, deeds, secret notes, and the like. The die roll to read a language must be made every time the character tries to read a document (not just once per language). A successful die roll means the Apokrykleft puzzled out the meaning of the writing. Only one die roll can be made for any particular document at a given experience level. If the die roll fails, the Apokrykleft can try again after gaining a new experience level.
  His understanding of the document is roughly equal to his percentage chance for success: a 20% chance means that, if the Apokrykleft understands it at all, he gets about 20% of the meaning. A different document in the same language requires another die roll (it probably contains different words). It isn’t necessary to keep notes about what languages the Apokrykleft has read in the past, since each document is handled individually.
  If the character knows how to read a given language because he spent a proficiency slot on it, this die roll is unnecessary for documents in that language.

Spellcasting:
Starting at 2nd level, the Aprokrykleftis gains learns to cast spells, in much the same manner as a wizard. Unlike a typical wizard, because of the Apokrykleft’s desire to keep such arcane secrets secret, an individual Apokrykleft does not keep a spellbook of his own. Rather, each time he would prepare spells, he must return to an Apokrykleft Temple-Library to study from their collections of hidden lore. Likewise, they cannot memorize spells from books scribed by anyone outside of their order.

The Apokrykleft’s spells are drawn from the Divination, Geometry, and Universal schools of wizard magic, and they may learn spells of up to the 8th level of ability. Because of the vast hidden libraries at their disposal when at their home temples, the Apokrykleft may prepare any spell on their spell-list, without having to learn or scribe spells into a personal spellbook. Like wizards and bards, Apokryklefts may not cast spells when wearing armor.

Spade	Spells
Level	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th
1
2	1
3	1
4	1	1
5	2	1
6	2	1	1
7	2	2	1
8	3	2	1	1
9	3	2	2	1
10	3	3	2	1	1
11	4	3	2	2	1
12	4	3	3	2	1	1
13	4	4	3	2	2	1
14	4	4	3	3	2	1	1
15	4	4	4	3	2	2	1
16	4	4	4	3	3	2	1	1
17	4	4	4	4	3	2	2	1
18	4	4	4	4	3	3	2	1
19	4	4	4	4	4	3	2	2
20	4	4	4	4	4	3	3	2

Level Limits: The Apokryklefts accept members of all races, wanting to obtain the secrets of all races, cultures, and nations (even traditionally non-magical races like Dwarves and Halflings). Both Human and non-human Apokryklefts may advance without limits.

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Apokrykleft Spell List: includes spells appearing in the Player’s Handbook, Tome of Magic, Complete Wizard’s Handbook, and Player’s Option: Spells and Magic. Other spells from the schools of Lesser/Greater Divination, Geometry, or Universal appearing in other sources may be available with the DM’s approval.

• 1st level: Alarm, Cantrip, Comprehend Languages, Copy, Detect Disease, Detect Magic, Detect Phase, Detect Secret Passages & Portals, Detect Undead, Dictation, Divining Rod, Erase, Hold Portal, Identify, Read Magic, Shield, Wizard Mark
• 2nd level: Death Recall, Detect Evil/Good, Detect Invisibility, Detect Life, ESP, Hornung’s Baneful Deflector, Hypnotic Pattern, Knock, Know Alignment, Locate/Obscure Object, Moon Rune, Past Life, Protection from Cantrips, Undetectable Alignment, Wizard Lock
• 3rd level: Alamir’s Fundamental Breakdown, Bone Club, Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Dispel Magic, Explosive Runes, Lesser Sign of Sealing, Secret Page, Sepia Snake Sigil, Wizard Sight
• 4th level: Bestow/Remove Curse, Conjure Elemental-Kin, Detect Scrying, Fire Trap, Locate Creature, Magic Mirror, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Rainbow Pattern, There/Not There, Thunder Staff
• 5th level: Animate Dead, Avoidance, Conjure Elemental, Contact Other Plane, False Vision, Invulnerability to Normal Weapons, Khazid’s Procurement, Know Value, Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum, Prying Eyes, Rary’s Telepathic Bond, Teleport, Von Gasik’s Refusal
• 6th level: Enchant an Item, Ensnarement, Globe of Invulnerability, Greater Sign of Sealing, Guards and Wards, Invulnerability to Magic Weapons, Legend Lore, True Seeing
• 7th level: Fear Ward, Phase Door, Sequester, Teleport Without Error, Vanish, Vision
• 8th level: Analyze Dweomer, Binding, Maze, Permanency, Screen, Symbol, Trap the Soul

Sample Custom Class: The Chaordic

There is Law. There is Chaos. There is Neutrality. And then there is Chaordism. Chaordics are leaders and commanders who take a strange view of Neutrality, not trying to balance Law and Chaos, but rather to blend the two. The mix of chaos and order is often described as a harmonious coexistence displaying characteristics of both, with neither chaotic nor ordered behavior dominating. Some hold that nature is largely organized in such a manner; in particular, living organisms and the evolutionary process by which they arose are often described as chaordic in nature. The chaordic principles have also been used as guidelines for creating human organizations — business, government and hybrids—that would be neither centralized nor anarchical networks.

Base Class Statistics:

• Ability Requirements: Cha 15
• Alignments: Must be Neutral (with regards to Law and Chaos)
• Experience Chart: As Paladin/Ranger
• Hit Dice: d8
• Hit Points per level beyond 9th: +2 per level
• THAC0: Warrior
• Saves:
  • Paralyzation/Poison/Death: as Warrior
  • Rods/Staves/Wands: as Warrior
  • Petrification/Polymorph: as Warrior
  • Breath Weapon: as Warrior
  • Spell: as Warrior
• Proficiencies:
  • Weapons, Initial: 4
  • Weapons, Advancement: +1 per 3 levels
  • Non-Weapon, Initial: 4
  • Weapons, Advancement: +1 per 3 levels
• Non-weapon Group Crossovers: General, Warrior, Priest
• Allowed Weapons: As Thief
• Allowed Armor: All armor and shields

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Class Features:

Code of Ethics: A Chaordic cannot exist in a vacuum and a Chaordic without an organization to lead (although lead is a very loose term with them), whether that be as small as an adventuring party or as large as a nation, is no Chaordic at all. Chaordics follow a complex philosophy which attempts to harmoniously balance the ideals of chaos and order within organizations. They must always strive to embrace complexity, empower those under their command to make their own independent tactical decisions, encourage others to speak their minds, and encourage innovation and evolution within the operations of their organization.

Weapons and Armor: While Chaordics may be found at the head of armies, they are much more concerned with experimenting with the organization of their forces and unorthodox leadership strategies than actual combat. Because they spend less time studying the actual on-the-ground specifics of warfare than other commanders, they are limited to using those weapons allowed for the Thief class (club, dagger, dart, hand crossbow, knife, lasso, short bow, sling, broad sword, long sword, short sword, and staff) and to wearing Chainmail or lighter armor, as well as shields.

Despite their limitations on available weapons and armor, Chaordics still fight as well as other warriors, benefitting from the warrior’s THAC0 advancement, increased number of attacks, and bonus hit points for high Constitution scores. They are not, however, able to roll for percentile Strength.

Leadership: Chaordic’s specialize in organization, however unorthodox. Even beginning Chaordics know how to use messengers and signals, are familiar with military terminology, and understand the mechanics of moving a large number of men. A Chaordic is able to take charge of up to 100 soldiers per level.

Communication: A central factor in being able to form functioning, decentralized armies, governments, businesses, and other organizations is efficient communication. At 1st level, the Chaordic learns one human regional language for free. At every level thereafter, the Chaordic may learn one additional bonus regional language. In campaigns that do not have distinct regional languages, the Chaordic may instead learn the languages of any sentient humanoid races (Elvish, Dwarvish, Orcish, etc).

Scroll Use: The Chaordic’s study of languages and a touch of magic extends to scrolls and all manner of written magic items as well. The Chaordic can use any kind of written magic items: wizard scrolls, priest scrolls, tomes, librams, manuals, etc. His chance of success when using such items is equal to 10% per experience level, to a maximum of 90% at 9th level, at which point he also learns to cast spells of his own (see below). If a Chaordic fails to accurately read the scroll, usually something detrimental occurs, such as the spell backfiring.

Inspire Allies: The Chaordic’s odd bottom-up management style is surprisingly inspiring to those who work with him. Starting at 3rd level, if a Chaordic knows the nature of the threat they face, he can spend three full rounds rallying his friends to grant them a +2 bonus on attack rolls and saving throws for 1 round per experience level of the Chaordic. All allies within 10’ per level of the Chaordic who can hear him gain this benefit.

Spellcasting:
Starting at 9th level, a Chaordic can cast a small number of spells to aid him in organizing his men. These spells are cast in the same manner as a Wizard’s spells but are drawn from the Chaos, Charm, Law, and War spheres of priest spells.

The Chaordic must keep a spellbook, is limited to a maximum number of spells per level, as indicated by his Intelligence score, and must make a learn spells roll in order to add a new spell to his selection; if the character fails to learn a spell, he may not try to learn it again until he gains another level. At 9th level, and each level thereafter, the Chaordic may add a single spell from the Chaordic spell list to his spellbook for free, without having to pass his learn spells check.

The Chaordic may cast spells in any armor allowed by his class without penalty. Because his spells are meant to be used in complex, ongoing situations, all non-instantaneous spells cast by the Chaordic last an additional time unit (round, hour, day, etc.) per two levels.

Chaordic	Spells
Level	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
9	1
10	2
11	2	1
12	2	2
13	2	2	1
14	3	2	1
15	3	2	1	1
16	3	3	2	1
17	3	3	3	1
18	3	3	3	1
19	3	3	3	2
20	3	3	3	3

Followers: The primary goal of a Chaordic is the establishment of his own chaordic organization. At 10th level, a Chaordic who has established a stronghold attracts 40 to 400 0th-level men-at-arms as followers, as well as 2d6 lower-level Chaordics (roll 1d6 to determine the level of each), which serve as his non-hierarchical, decentralized management structure.

Dispel Charm: Chaordic’s expect those working for them to think for themselves. Starting at 11th level, a Chaordic gains the ability to dispel any Charm or Domination effects up to three times per day. The range of this power is 30 yards, and it requires nothing more than one round of concentration. The base chance of success is 50%, ±5% for each level difference between the Chaordic and the creator of the effect to be dispelled.

Races and Level Limits: Only humans and those of human blood have a sufficiently fluid ethical view to take up the mantle of a Chaordic. Half-humans (including Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Half-Ogres, Aasimar, Tieflings, and Genasi) may become Chaordics up to 12th level of ability.

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Chaordic Spell List: all spells appear in the Priest’s Spell Compendium

• 1st level: Battlefate, Command, Courage, Mistaken Missive, Morale, Portent, Protection from Law/Chaos, Remove Fear, Sanctuary
• 2nd level: Calm Chaos, Chaos Ward, Detect Charm, Dissension’s Feast, Emotion Perception, Enthrall, Hold Person, Messenger, Music of the Spheres, Protective Charm, Rally, Snake Charm
• 3rd level: Adaptation, Caltrops, Dictate, Emotion Control, Fortify, Miscast Magic, Random Causality, Rigid Thinking, Spiff’s Wonder Bubbles, Strength of One
• 4th level: Chaotic Combat, Chaotic Sleep, Cloak of Bravery, Compulsive Order, Defensive Harmony, Entrench, Free Action, Gloomcloud, Imbue with Spell Ability, Inverted Ethics, Leadership/Doubt, Tanglefoot/Selective Passage