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kingtycoon) wrote2019-05-30 09:23 am
Some D&D with our friends
So it started – there. The port of Eas was once, long-long-ago a big & prosperous city for the small folk of Jaibel’s western coast. It’s not now though. Heaven’s no. Just a little village sitting in the midst of a lot of sprawling old urban grandeur. The traffic is light & irregular, at the port’s docks & along the roads leading north – Eas stands at the southern end of Venrat. Our adventurers Chitchit & Niskt – you can tell that they’re rat people can’t you? Just by the names right? They’re Yellowpelt & Bluefur respectively. Good kids too. They’d come to the port of Eas some time back looking for an answer to Chitchit’s instructor’s Unanswerable Question. Something to do with the stars. Chitchit being scholarly had found a brochure of some kind – an advertising bill suggesting signs & wonders to be found in Eas port & so they’d left their underground city deep the Jaibelcrowns & made the journey to Eas. After a little time spent it was pretty clear to all that the things they’d heard? Not true anymore. Niskt came along, of course, because that’s what Niskt does. A good rat & true- kindly & loyal & wise, the rock. 
Trying to sail out of Eas at the wrong time of year is – well it can’t be done. The ships are gone & all that’s left is a fishing fleet of about a dozen boats. No-one’s going where you want to go. So you have to make yourself at home. Fortunately that’s pretty easy – what with all the abandoned houses. Temples. Castles. I described Eas as a series of barely connected neighborhood-villages all living in the skeleton of a larger city, a sprawling one. A little bit wild & a little bit cozy. One of the cozier places is right down on the waterfront. The Merry Hare is a pretty welcoming place. Tea-house, inn, tavern – it fits all the bills & functions at a public room for the dock-working community. Pennyscale is the lizard-person who runs it. He’s got a pair of copper coins wedged in where some scales once were & that’s that. He’s got a dwarf who barely talks in the back – the cook. He’s hard-bitten & mean but barely comes out from the kitchen. So there’s the place. Old polished wooden rails, a long bar & plenty of nearly empty bottles against a mirrored back wall. There’s music sometimes & cards or dice most times. In the day the clientele is… Weirdos. In the evenings it’s everyone. Our rat people are sitting at the bar in the height of noon listening to a madman mutter as he madly scrawls in his sheaf of papers. Chitchit is curious & none-to-sensible. He tries to sneak up on the madman & see what he’s writing. Secrets? Visions? No. This is Rustle the Orc & he’s an artist. He’s sketching an elaborate drawing of our two heroes walking through the tall grass prairie surrounding Eas. He’s crazy though & when Chitchit fails to be sneaky he tries to hide his work & has a little bit of a freakout. He’s easy to talk down & the rats manage to even get him to sell them the picture. Rustle the Orc is delighted. Of course warm beer & warm tea & sea-breezes aren’t all that’s going on. Adventure is the story. Pennyscale mentions that the old lighthouse keeper went missing & that the lighthouse hasn’t been… “Oh, what’s that? Out on the streets?”
Out on the street, the boardwalk actually, there’s a commotion. The laborers working on the dredge – well… That’s its own thing: In the off season Alfi Merit, mayor of the city got together a gang of laborers to dam up the docks & get to dredging. This is a laborious process where a gang of men dig out mud & trash to make the port navigable. The workers are all on break, eating lunch outside the Merry Hare & that’s when a little kid falls down into it. The dredge. This is the commotion because a bunch of crocodiles occupy the dredge when they’re not getting shooed away – the kid was trying to feed them or taunt them? Something. He fell down & scurried under the docks. Well Chitchit & Nistk are what you’d call Good Eggs & they do the heroic thing – tying off their ropes to the rail to swing down like heroes & save the little kid. What they find though is that the little kid is hiding in the mud, sure, but in the mud that’s been concealing a door, under the docks. Something deep down from olden days. They put the kid back up on the docks & let everyone know that “Saving children is what Rat People do.” Then they get it into their heads that maybe this – hidden door in the mud under the city – maybe this is what they came here looking for. So they impetuously mount an expedition. Nice & Easy.
The complex – because that’s what it is, under the docks is nondescript, rock. Carved & stacked unmortared & gray – or else carved out of the same – is bare walls & bare floors & lacking, altogether for adornment. Doors hang open – sort of. Where there were doors there’s just hanging rusted hinges, the wood rotted away long ago. They find a room near the entrance with three ways to go & they go forward. This leads to a series of really capacious rooms – big rooms lined with lead-sealed hatches & supported in the middle by big, house-sized pillars all themselves covered with these lead-sealed hatches. There are marks that suggest another time – an ancient script but the words are indecipherable – nonsense. Chitchit speculates that they are names. While they’re walking around, darkvision to guide them, they are startled by a pair of shambling monstrosities. They look, sort of, like the little people of the town – gnomes, or hin or golinoy. One of those. Kind of indistinguishable really. But they’ve got weird posture & long, long fingers & they’re crowned with mushrooms. Niskt is a mushroom farmer from way back. Niskt figures some of these mushrooms are good for eating, some are poison & some are just weird. These characters shamble up on our rats & they’re too weird to trust & make no sound at all, no response to any calls. So they decide on arrows & fire. Arrows & fire will do the trick. They lay these things low after skittering up the walls of the mausoleum (for that’s what these chambers are friends). They take shots & strike unerringly. The mushroom-headed monsters go down but not slowly – they’re like fighting wooden dummies. The toadstools & woody growths in their mouths & eyes aren’t pleasant but they suggest these guys to be mindless. In another part of the mausoleum they find that the lead seals are broken – peeled off like worn grout & that there’s more than just a couple of these mushroom-heads. In fact there’s a mushroom-man. A long-tall creature with no mouth & an odd number of eyes. Comes on faster than the others & tries to rush them. They meet his approach with a bunch of arrows & fire. The stream of spores that gout from his wounds ignite like flour in a mill & the room gets hot fast & dark again faster. They’re not sure what it all means. A scattered mess of loose coins engraved with the images of strange kings is the only clue to be found here.
Bereft of any useful insight & not having found what it is exactly they’re looking for – our brave & be-whiskered heroes return to their point of entry & set their course for the western hallway. This takes them on a circuitous path toward a long & crumbling stairwell that descends down, down, down – far below the waters of the shore. Their ears pop & they feel a clammy wind emanate from below (a welcome respite from the equatorial heat of Venrat, but unsettling still). Our heroes are sneaky, trepidations even, having been chastened by their encounters with the monstrous denizens of this peculiar tomb they are careful in their approach. At the base of the stairs is a room & in this room there is a table with a lit candle formed of melted fat upon it. And their rat-eyes & rat noses smell this far enough in advance that they carefully – cautiously creep through the rubble – remaining hidden from the denizens of the room.
And boy are they glad they did when they see it. In the room are a collection of pear-shaped infant-like figures that are grotesquely mouthing something off of the floor. Meantime a pair of little monstrous caretakers move through their huddled mass – they’re built like gorillas, but hairless & with heads like shaved rabbits. Where they go they let out hideous farts, visibly gusting from them & coagulating in a lingering green miasma that these other awful things (which, on second glance look a lot more diseased, a lot more mildewed) are biting at & eating up.
“This is the worst.” Say our heroes together, muttering in dark shadows.
“It’s terrible here.” Says a small voice nearby.
Niskt doesn’t hesitate now – Niskt’s hammer is to hand & a dervish of whirling blue-black menace is what confronts this unseen speaker. It’s a near thing but Niskt strikes the beast – an itty-bat hanging from the ceiling. “Don’t hurt me, I’ll help you!” Cries the bat, secretly. Niskt takes pity & lets the creature dangle from an elbow. Meantime the commotion is alerting the room of awful monsters. They trundle up toward the stairs & our hidden heroes. Chitchit is clever & ahead of the game – he casts his 10,000 ball bearings out over the stairs & adds a bit of lamp oil to make it all the worse. By now it’s clear that the rotten little baby-things & their fart-ape caretaker were oozily gumming the bodies of some mushroom-people who are embedded in the floor. It’s a grotesque tableau for sure – but nothing 10,000 ball bearings & quantity of fire won’t make more absurd. The melee is short & intense with the Dretches jumping up & the Manes falling down. It’s a tough fight made a lot tougher by the sudden & terrible betrayal of the architect of the whole scene!
The little talking bat transforms into a little biting snake & tries to bring poor Niskt to ground. It’s a sudden & ruthless betrayal & it’s met by the canny knack Chitchit who gives the snake the bag. Thinking quickly as Niskt finishes off the last dretch Chitchit grasps the snake & stuffs it in one of his burglar’s bags. The creature writhes & thrashes & curses in a dozen languages as it transforms & seeks to escape but Chitchit’s hands are firm & he bashes the bag until the creature inside shatters. All that’s left is an exterior skin that crumbles like an eggshell & the same is true of the other demons. Broken from the mortal realm by violent action they shatter & break apart – their mortal forms merely shells that break & fall to pieces scattered on the ground.
“Demons get the bag.” The rats decide.
The room’s contents are confusing at best. Besides the mushroom-people emdedded in the floor (and destroyed now, by fire) there’s the table with the candle & a collection of strange writings that seem to be religious in nature – convoluted, nonsensical. The First Rule of the Necropolitan is that one must reverence the Necropolitan. Weird stuff. The room has a pair of exits – one to the south & east – down more stairs into deeper darkness & one barricaded by a mass of welded-together mausoleum hatches. From the other side they can hear people – calling for aid. Mistrustful they try to get a look but just can’t seem to find their way through. At last it’s decided that people who need help should be helped. That’s the Ratfolk way. “We rescue children & help others.” They decide and use their prybars to break down the door.
On the other side are a collection of the weird little folk they’d encountered before – but different. Like hin (halflings) or gnomes, or golinoy – sure, but different. With white eyes & long unkempt hair & terrible posture & long dragging claws these creatures introduce themselves with little ceremony. One speaks first, its voice a wheezing basso-profundo “I am the architect.” It’s made clear soon that these are ghouls – eaters of the dead & mainly peaceable, living here in the ancient tombs. They show off their larder – a fathomless pit filled with tombs, thousands – tens of thousands. These ghouls offer sanctuary in their sanctuary – a shrine made of gnawed-on bones – a large, elaborate & spooky shrine. They claim to be the keepers of the ancient ways – paragons of civilization & the memory of times long past. In their sanctuary The Minister “I am the Minister,” indistinguishable from the other shaggy-sharp-toothed weirdos indicates the shrines to the unknown god The Necropolitan. “It sensed us & our need, it came to us and offered us wisdom. We discovered our place & ceased to be mindless. I have recorded the new law in my book.”
The story the ghouls tell is that there’s another nation – of the mushroom people that they share the world with & that a wicked prince of the mushroom people has invaded their nation & is in cahoots with demons. It’s a bad situation. The demons had locked the poor ghouls up & tried to separate them from their religious materials & really – who even knows what the wicked prince will do? He’s around here somewhere…
The rats – good-o’s that they are can’t leave it stand that a demon-inspired prince is allowed to conquer a whole country of ghouls! Nosir. So they rest, under watch of the ghouls. “Rat people take naps after they save children. They always take naps & always save children.” And once rested up they bound down the stairs.
The prince is a big & spindly mushroom-fungus man, and a no good creep. He’s got a dretch or two with him in his secret lair at the bottom of the ghouls’ kingdom & that is where he dies. Victim to ratfolk justice. It’s a reasonably complex fight what with the manes & dretches he’s got on hand – but the rats are doughty warriors & sneaky besides. And it happens that the mushroom prince’s familiar – a wicked, lying quasit, is already missing & dead (what with receiving the bag treatment)– leaving the poor boy in the basement alone with his diabolical writings & summoning circles. The fallen prince dispatched, the rats root about in his articles & they find a hidden room in the ghouls’ country – a weird one too. An ancient diabolical shrine. Hundreds of old pennies are stacked with jewels into the form of an idol – a disquieting puzzle of discarded mammon. There’s a scroll written in an unknown script & a stoppered copper jar besides. The ratfolk Chitchit & Niskt decide that it’s theirs. And that whatever wicked things the penny-demon was up to won’t harm them. No.
Having freed the Ghouls (and the captured mushroom boys that the prince had kidnapped) they decide to visit the mushroom country. This is across the hall & to the east in the main hallway. This area is a beautiful & hideous forest of treelike mushrooms. All the peculiar & wondrous foliage of the underdark on display – dangerous & mysterious. The mushroom boys lead our rats…
And did I mention? How they learned to speak mushroom? The mushroom people – the myconids, they haven’t any mouths, nor lungs. No. They speak through a psychic connection bred by the scattering of their spores. They try and try to come up on the people they meet to throw these spores on them – but it turns out that people don’t like silent monsters that walk up on them & don’t respond to calls. So at the final moment they learn to speak to the mushrooms – the poor li’l sprouts that the mad prince had imprisoned.
Anyhow- these sprout-boys lead them through the jungle of spores & rot into the sovereign’s realm. This is a deep pit that goes far, far down & is lit by luminous mushrooms & bridged by planks of Zurkhwood. It’s an interesting climb down into the pit of the mushroom-sovereign. There’s the silent & nodding beholder & the flailing & vascular violet fungi. And off on a ledge on the side are a pair of mud covered goblin-babies that play in the mud & maliciously expose their wiggling butts to our rat-folk. “What are you babies doing in that mud!” But the mud-mephits don’t answer – they just keep the mud flowing. Mud. That’s what the bottom of the pit is – a meter of mud for the myconid sovereign to stride about in – regal & imperious. It speaks with mental-images, hallucinations of bygone epochs. It tells them of a time, long ago, when a king of the lands above (when the lands above had a king) and who feared for the continuation of his peoples. So he created the sovereigns and placed them in this garden. The Rescue Garden. These are flashes of memory. The rescue garden was meant to create a supply of food in times of crisis. Against the coming collapse. It remembers to them – to our rats – about the once vital kingdom of Eas & it is unrecognizable from the ruins of the present. They say that they’ve ended the sovereign’s wicked son & the sovereign weeps – to say that the garden must end now – for its line is finished & it cannot replace itself as its forebears had done.
This is all quite sad. The ratfolk, Chitchit & Niskt agree – a real shame. Demons? What can you do? They catch on that the food is available though & in serious quantities – they gather up some ripple-bark in their not-for-demon-killing bags & make to head out – back to Eas. Niskt though – is way too mystified by the beholder. That thing just stares and stares- doesn’t do anything, doesn’t respond except to turn & look, turn & look. Niskt has to touch it & does. The poor rat’s claw pierces the thing’s thin skin & it bursts – catastrophically. They have to drag themselves out of the mushroom kingdom and back to the country of ghouls where they plead for their new friend The Minister to help them. “I am The Minister.” Says The Minister. “Necropolitan has granted me the strength to cure you.” And he does. They take another nap.
Returning to the surface it’s night. The bar –the Merry Hare is doing fine – Rustle the Orc is there drawing pictures. He comes up to the Rats with one. Pushes it right into their faces. It shows a tableaux of them being destroyed & eaten by unthinkable monsters from his broken imagination. He thrusts it at them & tears it up. “I’m sorry I thought you died.” It’s a nice celebration in their honor & they find, incidentally, that the dwarf cook can really do amazing things with Ripplebark – the mushroom meat they’d found below. “Reminds me of home. I miss it sometimes, the good parts.” He offers money for more & that night the rats embark on an enterprise.
In the morning they persuade the dockworkers to enter the mushroom nation & to gather mushrooms up – the eatable kind. They pay well (for capitalists) and they make a fine bit of money over the course of a week. Naturally this calls the attention of Alfi Merit – the mayor. He & his orcish clarks are on hand to receive the taxes owed. They hem & haw for a moment but are quickly persuaded to just… be citizens. Alfi’s on the up & up & they give him 10 of the 50 gold coins they’d won adventuring in business.
Deciding there & then to stake a claim in the town they petition for & receive Alfi’s letter of marque that tells the world that Chitchit & Niskt & “What’s the name of your gang? No name? I’ll leave this part blank for you to come up with something.” Have rights to set up their own shop in town & to uphold the public good according to their noble conscience. He’s heard after all that they save children & that that is their way. If they need naps they could always try and find a likely spot somewhere in town to settle.
Agreeing to all of this & deciding impulsively to settle in the city Chitchit & Niskt wander the city & discover a likely looking base. At the corner of two disused roads they find what seems to be an ancient church. Stone & brick – vaulted. There’s a graveyard in back – overgrown & full of grazing feral water buffalo. Chichchit’s looking for a church. The Architect had shown him how the ghouls’ nation was connected by narrow pipes to the upper world & that by dislocating their shoulders the ghouls could find their way into graveyards to eat up the bodies there. He wants to keep in touch through the pipe systems in case they need healing again. This abandoned church seems like the right kind of place so they go inside. It’s got a few marauders & gangsmen hanging around playing games of death. They disrupt their dice-game & with some whip flourishes & diving leaps into the rafters they scare them off. Making the place their own they install their foreman – Chester, the likeable Hin as their houseman – and offer him a princely sum to have the place renovated & made pleasant. They are nonplussed but not particularly anxious by the tooth-filed bandit they’d had to kill taking the place over. His network of stitched up scars & weird brands indicating his devotion to a secret, illegal cult was only displeasing, not frightening.
Meantime the situation with the lighthouse & the missing lighthouse keeper had gotten pretty concerning. None having heard from the village at the foot of the lighthouse & Pennyscale saying that his journey there to check on things (in the company of another, different rat) earlier in the week had not gone well at all. At all. Pennyscale was short on details & the Rats were short on interest. “Let’s just go.” They said & then did.
The city’s footprint – I tell them, is like a large city of today. But there’s not much in the way of settlement, just small villages spread over the bones –along wide streets & in the foundations of old colossi.
Which is to say that it’s about a half day walk to where the lighthouse & its associated village can be found. The village is… weird. There are emaciated farm animals all around & the houses seem abandoned – but also full of farm-animal waste. There are no people to be found. They look around on the beach and see the remains of a big bonfire – maybe several consecutive bonfires. The lighthouse is big. Very wide at the base & narrow at the top – capped by a glass room & about nine stories tall. There’s a door & two windows above it, ascending the tower. They knock at the door & someone answers. Cryptically & unsatisfyingly.
“We’re looking for ‘muffin-ear’, the lighthouse keeper.”
“He’s not here, he’s a terrible jerk & I sent him away.”
They’d heard the tale of Muffin Ear before- the disfigured lighthouse keeper who came to town every month or so. But he’d missed his trips & people were wondering.
“Where did you send him?”
“To the rocks – let him live there.”
It goes on and on – they can’t get anywhere with this lady & she’s not welcoming at all – won’t open the door more than a crack. They try to force it & it’s barricaded. They wander around the lighthouse & swim out to the rocks – they find what amounts to a camp but it’s abandoned. They go back to the lighthouse. Kicking sand.
Chitchit decides to scale it. Trivial for him – he’s a ratman with ratman claws. He makes it to the first window & sees it’s been broken open recently. Ties his rope & sneaks inside. He stumbles on a trapped stair & runs for the window as he hears the lady know about him.
What they know about the lady is that she’s a mermaid. She admitted that she’d come to the shore because she heard the lighthouse keeper singing & loved him. When he didn’t love her back for being too ugly she’d exiled him & then taken over the lighthouse. Mermaid. Chitchit & Niskt have a whole complicated combat with this lady – it goes from the top of the lighthouse to the bottom & involves tripping over ball bearings – long falls & the mermaid’s revealed presence - She’s about the ugliest person ever. One eye like a big red meatball, fingers like tiny cow-hooves. Magic tricks don’t work too good on her & her grotesque appearance is enough to snatch away one’s breath. They fight & fight and this involves falling out of windows – pursuit up and down a rope. At one point she has Chitchit by the head & is holding him over the interior rail of the lighthouse’s tall shaft & is holding Niskt by the tail. Niskt goes berserk & bites & bites. Niskt bites the wicked thing to death who screams to the last.
It’s all very hardcore.
In the lighthouse they find the door barred by a millstone – together the two of them can barely budge it. How the mermaid got it there? Well – she was shockingly strong. They find a battered old sea chest with a diary inside. It’s the Sea-Hag’s hope chest – full of coins & weird knickknacks. The book, or diary, or… hit list tells about how she’s fallen in love with a beautiful man who will marry her & then it’s got a long list of crossed of names with mean statements about each. It goes on pretty long. She’s apparently been trying to seduce & then murdering people for a while.
Searching around the lighthouse they find the villagers. All buried in sand. They explain that they were under the Sea-Hag’s control & had to remain buried in the day & then at night they’d fish & fish & fish so that she could feed. She ate a hundred pounds of fish at a time at least! They explain. And they’re very happy – the men & women & children &…. Gremling?
There’s a gremling. Very formal, very weird. He introduces himself: I am Shammus. The monk. I come from the monastery on the hills called Visions of Moments to Come Monastery. That monastery is on the Auzile Hills. I had a vision that I would come to here to try to save these people because of a dream that I had. In the Visions of Moments to Come Monastery. The Abbess of that monastery on the Auzile hills will be happy that I survived & that Abbess probably foresaw that I. Shammus. The monk. Would meet you kindly rat people. Thank you. Kindly rat people. For saving me.” Shammus joins them & agrees to help out how he can with their ventures – in the hope that they’ll travel with him, eventually, over the plains & to the hill.
They head back to their base to work on it some more & settle on their name – a little punny number Knights of the Long Tail. Then they nap. “Because after saving children Rat people take naps.”