Adventure 2 - To Find a Cow

[kingtycoon]

Deciding that finding cows for the Mothers & an Ox for the Workers were the best of all possible choices, the group set out to travel north, along the recently dried out riverbed through the Blasted Wastes to the frontier village known lately as Loksh town. 

The trip is a kind of ebullient excuse for Mishka to run & run & she maintains a pace that the rest of the band must struggle to keep up to her rate of 60 miles each day. It’s arduous, but the group is quite fit & in 3 days they make their way – all the while avoiding the denizens of the Blasted Wastes – terrible hyena men who sniff & search & chase anything they find & where they go a cloud of flies follows. 

The Way North

Loksh town, it so happens is named for Loksh – a horned devil-man who runs a local… business? Some kind of store – but maybe also a temple? It’s a little confusing. He confesses that as a priest of the Trickster God Addy he’s compelled to trick people, but has decided to do so in a constructive way. He points out that the magic well in the town, which once was the source of the river has actually dried up and that only by his secret magic has he been able to keep refilling it to keep the local indigents & wanderers watered – as well as his small herd of dusty, skinny cattle. It’s a hard life in the Blasted Wastes after all. A bit evasive about his purposes – Loksh won’t tell much of his actual goals or intention until he’s satisfied that the group isn’t affiliated with the Wzectc – a clear possibility since they’ve run straight from Sevvel where the Malboge worshipping cult resides. Pacified, eventually, he explains his true purpose & also explains the reason for his many bruises, his cracked horn, split lip & black eye. He’s tricked some of the hyena men into following in his scheme of debt, work & patronage. The plan, you see, is for him to trick (priest of Addy) the beast-people into becoming civilized, to settling down & being… less horrible. It’s not going well. His two workers Grn & Rrgn have fewer flies & can speak in a rudimentary way – but they’re uncommonly violent & strike out with bare provocation. Loksh has a hard time with them, but the party gets to eye the cattle & Loksh offers them all his stock, but he needs no money – he’s got Addy-Buxxx – an ersatz sort of coin he sells with the promise that sufficient quantities of such will buy a better place in the world to come. Instead of money he wants the magic flask which once allowed the river to flow, his goal is to heal the land. Unfortunately it’s been stolen by the same fly-shrouded hyena men that had been plaguing the wastes. 

Loksh' temple

They’d gone to the ruins of Goeszh – a  hidden city & once the bank of the desert-crossing traders in pre-apocalyptic times. The town cut from stone & lying at the bottom of a deep & hidden crevasse in the desert, approachable by only one hidden road. Of course the group is without much need for roads & they are able to stake out the town with relative ease. They work into the night creating a tether & rope system that traverses the whole pit, and then hook Mishka up to it. The two half-orcs – Non & Gentlee are posted up on opposite sides of the chasm & work together to lower Mishka the shifter down into the town some 50 feet below. Once lowered she’s confronted by the piles of skinned bodies lying around in the dusty town square – this is the place where the hyena men come to dump the corpses of their prey (though prey seems improper a word when they don’t eat what they hunt & only skin them, alive). These are bloody & horrific people & as Mishka approaches they come alive. 

The Ruins of Goeszh

The melee that follows is a chaotic affair where magic is loosed by both sides- huge swathes of ground are turned into patches of jutting spikes or frozen hazards by Mishka and Warril respectively. From within some of the houses come a pair of lavishly horned hyena men, they throw magic and shoot bows and wave their massive cleaver-swords about but to little effect as they never quite are able to close on the party – who is largely positioned up out of the town where the horror-centipedes and skinned-alive beings can’t reach. Elwin in particular distinguishes himself through careful sniping from cover with his lighting gun while Gideon utilizes all of his taunts & japes to some effect while Mishka, bounced by the half-orcs & cut free by herself is thrown to the ground & nearly killed. In the end the fight is accomplished & the group has prevailed over the twisted & wicked beings of the ruined town. They find the complex vault & with great care enter it, deciding that it, of all places, would make a good hiding place. Within they find the magical bottle as well as a pair of magical gloves, still on the corpse of the would-be robber, interred here many decades ago. As well they find a fabulous treasure of coins & artworks. 

The Impenetrable Vault of Goeszh

In the night Mishka hears the diabolical whispers of the demonic beings beyond the walls of the vault & deciding they must have a connection to her people she reaches out her thought to commune with them – only to have the Legion of whispering horrors take control over her body & compel her to kill the rest of the group & to skin them. She attacks Elwin first, clawing him across the face with her claws. He responds abruptly by shooting her in the face & dropping her to the ground, dead, well – mostly dead. The several other clerics of the group hasten to heal her – though the group’s trust is shattered. Elwin, having confessed to Loksh previously that in a friend he sought only one thing – that they not murder him. Such a bleak outlook all but broke Loksh’s heart – but who knew that such a matter would become so insistently a part of the Artificer’s experience.

Later the evil spirits consuming the town diminish, having been shot out of poor Mishka’s head. The group leaves the hellish pit behind and heads back to Loksh to claim their reward. Only to find the ruined town yet more ruined, the many indigenes living there now dead or cowering frightened near Loksh’s nominal church. On the roof lie Loksh – exhausted by his all-day & night effort to defend the town by careful application of circles of protection & guarding magics – he’s barely survived & … is not a horned devil-man at all. But a bipedal rat-person! What trickery is this?! Playing off the disguise as more trickery for the sake of religious sacrament – the rat-man explains that the hyena men became much bolder & that his assistants must have been inspired to revolt – because they’d snatched all his Addy-Buxxx & his cattle & then left to join their great war party. 

The Hyena-Men are something terrible & new in the world

Non – perhaps jealous that the demonic denizens of the Blasted Wastes had been able to manage a war party – his own fondest desire – becomes uncontrollably angry at the priest of Addy refusing to give the magic bottle & demanding satisfaction with the broken deal. Loksh for his part insists that the deal was fair & that their property is still theirs – only stolen by a third party. Non nears a violent rage that threatens to engulf not just the trickster-priest but the rest of the party – among them Warrill who is satisfied to replace the magic bottle and allow the river to be restored (eventually). The confrontation barely dies down when it suddenly occurs to everyone that there’s nothing preventing the great waband of hyena men (led most recently by a giant of their kind, a being of horror & malice that flayed the flesh off of anyone with a single stroke of its whip) could easily & would probably go to Sevvel. Determining that protecting the town & it’s people is in order the group takes off at an even greater pace than before – sprinting along the valley – they are surprised by an advance scout of the hyena-folk, a hunter & his band of actual hyenas. It’s not much of a confrontation but the sneaky hyena man saves his own life by running & hiding from Elwin’s murderous gun. 

They return to the path & find their way back to Sevvel, still standing, still intact. But for how long? 

Comments

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Going full Fallout?

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I explained this properly - but I picked this game up from the previous DM - who ran it till our characters became gods. This is all happening 100 years later after the space-elves & angel & devil cities have all been wrecked in serious cataclysms. We're doing a post-Minoan style dark age. 11th century Mediterranean. Amusingly the gods people worship & reference are our old PCs.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

You did explain! I was referencing the cow-quest.