Monsters, Horror, Gaming

Month: February 2017

Hex, Session XI – Actual Play – “The Yellow Sign Pt. 2”

The characters in this session were:

  • Armand Percival Reginald Francois Eustace de la Marche III, a suspiciously pale, apparently human noble and sorcerer, and certainly not a ghoul (how dare such a thing be suggested).
  • Caulis, a homunculus warlock liberated from its master; has made a pact with certain Faerie Powers.
  • Garvin Otherwise, a human rogue and burglar of the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild, with a very, very peculiar past and a zoog pet, Lenore.
  • Sprigley Gilette, a hardboiled, cigar-chomping human mercenary and veteran of several brutal wars, also a disciple of the mysterious Archdemon known as the Engine.
  • Vespidae, a waspkin bard/cleric – a sacred dancer with a deathwish, shunned by the waspkin community for complicated ritualistic reasons, and a devoted follower of the Queen in Yellow.

XP Awarded: 700 XP

Vespidae’s hive has been developing recently, and ever since she acquired the Yellow Sign, she has been noticing something subtly different about her pheromones – something almost intangible, but growing in intensity. It reminded her of the scent of the Queen in Yellow, but blended with her own. One thing was certain: she no longer smelled simply like a “dead drone,” the pariah-scent her exile had infused her with.

For weeks now, she had been converting the puppet factory of the Marionettist – now cleared of zombies and Crowsbeak thieves – into a new home, moving in her automaton and sculpted duplicates, like the drones of her own nest. Rooms were set aside to make room for a shrine to the Queen in Yellow, while Vespidae boarded up the windows and doors, ensuring the only way in was from above, through the roof.

She’d also been noticing something else. Waspkin had been buzzing by her new home with increasing frequently. They’d been perching on nearby roofs, watching her. Many of these waspkin smelled strange – some were the hiveless waspkin of Suckletown, others mutilated or outcast, lacking limbs or antennae, marked with the pheromones of exile. But some smelled of the hives of Stingsworth. Loyalists to the Queens of that district… yet drawn here, for reasons that remained unclear.

One day, Vespidae left her home to discover that left on the roof was a strange gift, like a tribute: a portion of Royal Jelly, the alchemical substance consumed by waspkin drones to transform them into Queens. Vesdpiae eyed the substance warily, not consuming it, but not throwing it out.

However, other matters were afoot. Having retrieved the script for the play The Tragical History of Robin Redcap, the adventurers had secured themselves invitations to the premiere of the bloody play by its writer, Vittoria Wolfsheart. They had also been asked by the playwright to keep an eye out for the play’s namesake, the sinister Robin Redcap, who they had last seen raging furiously in Faerie, having barely escaped with their lives after stealing back the play from his ruinous, otherworldly keep. Vespidae, meanwhile, had donated a sizable portion of her adventuring earnings to further supplement the play’s budget, buying additional special effects of a magical and mundane nature.

Faunsweald

At night, the district of Faunsweald bustled with activity. Banners advertising the many plays being staged in the theatrical quarter fluttered in the night breeze, illuminated by gaslamps and magical lights that shift in colour. Occasional illusions cast by apprentice stage-wizards offered “previews” of the performances within. These included a number of prominent advertisements for Edwin Fouchard’s latest offering, The Deadliest Marriage, a violent satire of romantic comedy which seemed to involve a lot of blood-spattered wedding guests. Occasional glimpses of The Tragical History of Robin Redcap could also be seen. To the east, the gaudy songs and laughter of Groanwell could be heard, the nightly debauchery of the pleasure-district.

The play-goers – Vespidae, Garvin, Armand, Caulis, and Sprigley – met at Cruor Row. Sprigley seemed oddly changed, having acquired what looked to be a clockwork arm and even more ritualistic tattoos. The fighter, unhinged by his time in the Old City, seemed to have taken to worshiping one of the Chthonic Gods, an entity he called the Engine. He still possessed Robin Redcap’s pike. Cruor Row led from the streets of Stumpridge into Faunsweald, and connected several major theatres, including the Prism, the Fates, and the Chiaroscuro. Of the three the Chiaroscuro was the largest and newest, an opulent theatre and opera house, currently decked out with banners and signs proclaiming the premiere of Vittoria Wolfsheart’s latest tragedy.

baroque

As the group prepared to make their entrance, several heard a buzzing sound from nearby, as shapes appeared in the night sky, descending rapidly. Warily they watched the shapes draw closer: a dozen waspkin, some clutching javelins, others stiletto blades that gleamed with poison. A heady pheromone stink suffused the street. Vespidae recognized the scent immediately as that of the Royal Guard of the Queens of Stingsworth, the waspkin matriarchs of Hex.

“Traitor!” one of the waspkin chittered to Vespidae in Vespine.

“Abomination!” another proclaimed.

waspkin

While the Guards berated Vespidae, Garvin slunk into the shadows and picked the lock of a nearby printing house, creating an escape route.

“Usurper!”

“Rebel!”

“Unclean!”

“Drone, you stand accused of conspiring to supplant the rightful rule of the Twelve Queens of Stingsworth!”

“You would corrupt us with your devotion to Blasphemous Idols!”

“Your punishment has been decreed.”

“Your wings, limbs, and antennae will be removed, but you will be kept alive. Your life will be lengthened, and you will be imprisoned in darkness, unable to fly, to walk, to dance, or to spread your evil through the city.”

“Submit to justice and your rebel followers will be spared.”

“Resist and you will all be slaughtered!”

“I meant no offense,” Vespidae insisted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your falsehoods will not save you,” one of the Royal Guards warned. “We have watched you, gathering your followers. The speak of the Thirteenth Queen. Your insurrection will not be tolerated.”

At this point, another group of waspkin emerged from the shadows – a group which had been following Vespidae, it seemed. Some were missing limbs or eyes or antennae; all reeked of exile.

“We fight for the Thirteenth Queen!” the rebels proclaimed. “Down with tyranny!”

While others of the group tried to protest, the Guards moved in. The resulting fight was fast and brutal; Sprigley sustained a wound but cut down one of the Guards, while Garvin, firing from the shadows, dispatched another. Vespidae used burning hands to scorch her foes while Armand used fire bolt to incinerate another. The fight continued, the Guards swarming, jabbing with their poisoned weapons. Vials of pheromones, brewed in the cauldrons of Valdemar Sluice and  used by the party to help identify themselves to Vespidae, made the battle suddenly more complicated, and at one of the “Royalist” guards, seemingly swayed by the chemical sovereignty that Vespidae now exuded, abruptly joined the “rebels” fighting to defend their transgressive new Queen.

A crowd swiftly gathered, but they assumed the battle to be a staged spectacle, half illusion and half acting, put on in anticipation of some new play. Applause filled the air as the last of the Royal Guards fled, only to be skewered by a javelin from Vespidae. Not quite knowing how to react to the applause, the group bowed and concealed the bodies in the nearby printing shop that Garvin had broken into, then moved on to the playhouse as if nothing had occurred.

The theatre itself was a huge structure of at least five storeys with a massive, bulbous dome at its centre. Perched at the four corners of the marble monstrosity were stone statues depicting allegorical representations of comedy, tragedy, history, and spectacle. The foyer of the Chiaroscuro was sumptuously carpeted and adorned with baroque, intricately ornamented architecture. A huge, crystalline chandelier dangled overhead, while on the walls, enchanted paintings of actors and actresses in famous roles looked down at the well-dressed men and women who lingered here, availing themselves of the well-stocked bar. Some of these characters included a representation of the mad mage Xavier Soulswell, who briefly seized control of the city and erected Delirium Castle, as well as the vampiric aristocrat known as the Countess of Carnage, a fictitious noblewoman from the distant undead metropolis of Erubescence.

Balconies

The stage had been set with various props and painted backdrops that had been enchanted to appear more realistic. The backdrop here depicted a dour landscape with a stern-looking keep in the background – quite similar to the actual Castle of the Bloody Vale. Trees and other vegetation are evident in the foreground. A small conjured stormcloud overhead periodically rumbled, its thunderous foreshadowing occasionally warning theatre-goers that the play would begin in half an hour.

There were hundreds of seats in the Chiaroscuro, most of them in the pit, but many more filling the numerous balcony levels that rose on three sides of the grand, impossibly ornate room. Many audience members were already taking their seats. Of particular note was a large box in which were ensconced a party of obviously foreign travelers garbed in the costume of the southern plains and deserts. Foremost among this group was a large domestic cat placed in a special divan, afforded the finest view in the house; the cat spoke with various retainers and servants quite normally, and was obviously an individual of some considerable importance.

The many balcony seats were stacked atop one another in four levels, with stairways and small elevators leading from one level to the next. Near the stage there were also private boxes thrust out from the main balcony to afford the rich occupants a finer view. Servants and ushers milled about bearing refreshments to those in the balconies and showing patrons to their seats.

The playwright Vittoria Wolfsheart awaited the party in her private box, given a privileged view of the stage. She wore a dark purple gown that set off her porcelain white complexion, and had pinned her hair to further emphasize her horns.

“I’m glad you could attend,” she said, greeting you with a curtsy.

“A charming production, from the look of it,” Armand said, with a haughty sniff.

“So far there have been no signs of the real Robin Redcap. But perhaps it might be of benefit for you to have a look around the theatre, just in case.”

“Hmm, I think I’ll take up position in the rafters,” Garvin said, eyeing the catwalk above.”

“Let’s check backstage,” Caulis said to Vespidae and Sprigley. “Then maybe we’ll join you here, Vittoria.”

Backstage at the Chiaroscruo, actors practiced their lines while the stage-wizards wove illusions to grant their costumes additional verisimilitude. The actor playing Robin Redcap could be seen, looking strikingly similar to the thin-limbed, white-bearded Fair Folk, as could the muscular Duke Gothmord. Peasants were having dirt and blood smeared on their faces. More props could also be seen here, including various fake grimoires, torture instruments, candles, “magical” crystals, tools, and fake weapons. The director, costumers, carpenters, and other stage-hands were bustling about, getting everything ready for the play. Vespidae, enthused with the artistic spectacle, spoke for awhile with the stage-illusionists and actors, providing additional instructions – a privilege earned from the substantial contributions the waspkin had made to the production. Eventually the director shooed them back to the main room of the theatre.

The party began their preparations. While most of the group stayed in the private box, Garvin had carefully scaled the rafters, talking his way past the stagehands lighting the production, so that he could get a good view of things from above. Caulis, summoning their pseudodragon familiar, sent the creature to patrol the theatre and report anything unusual. Armand and Caulis briefly visited with Nahotep, the cat-prince from New Ulthar. The creature – one of a race of familiars who overthrew their wizardly masters and became rulers of their kingdom – was charming and debonair, visiting Hex on a kind of grand tour, consulting with some of the city’s necromancers on arcane matters, and generally soaking in the sights. Nahotep seemed sympathetic to Caulis, a liberated homunculus, and lamented the fact that so many of the mandrake-root-folk were still slaves to their creators. Armand, ever the silver-tongued sophisticate, invited Nahotep to dine and stay at his townhouse for a time, an invitation which was politely accepted.

A few minutes later, the curtain rose, and the play began…

Stage

The play began as expected, but Vittoria’s revisions – based on Robin’s scribbled suggestions – quickly became evident. In this new version, Robin is not an innocent spirit corrupted by Duke Gothmord, but a malignant sprite who warps the heroic, armour-clad ruler into a bloodthirsty maniac. In the opening scene, Gothmord rescues several peasants from the marauding Redcap, and binds the fairy to his will. The scene, at the edge of the Tangle, is given atmosphere and verisimilitude through the use of painted backdrops and elaborate magical illusions.

It was at this point in the play that Caulis’ familiar became aware of something: a pallid figure had appeared in a box opposite Vittoria’s watching the play intently. The homunculus informed their companions, and they confirmed that the figure appeared to be none other than Robin Redcap himself.

The play progressed, Duke Gothmord becoming increasingly depraved, warped by Redcap, abusing and even kidnapping his serfs. As the intermission approached, the scene shifted to a dungeon in which a local woman was imprisoned – the witch unknowingly captured by the Duke. It seemed a torture scene would soon commence, to judge from the instruments arrayed onstage. At this moment, though, Robin seemed deeply bored; they could see him yawn from across the theatre. Vespidae, worried that the fairy would launch himself into a bloodthirsty rampage if not entertained, held up her Yellow Sign, invoking the goddess of art to intervene, to infuse the play with vividness and inspiration. The Sign gleamed in the darkness, and a numinous chill fell upon everyone in the theatre, gooseflesh breaking out across everyone’s skill as the drama on stage became suddenly intensified.

Instantly – but, somehow, without anyone noticing the moment it happened – the actress playing the witch was replaced with none other than Magdalena, the sculptress who had been left marooned in Carcosa. Duke Gothmord picked up a glowing iron, preparing for some gruesome, sadistic torture, suddenly gleaming with what looked like real heat. He approached the surprised and genuinely terrified Magdalena. The crowd craned their necks, and even Robin had sat up, suddenly transfixed.

Vespidae, alarmed by the effect her invocation to the Queen in Yellow had had, flitted to the rafters to confer with Garvin. The Ravenswing thief and arcane trickster cast mage hand to deflect the branding iron, while Vespidae cast silent image to make it look as if the iron had struck, producing a horrific burn. Magdalena was screaming now, though more from disorientation than pain. Robin seemed pleased by the gruesomeness of this display.

Sprigley, noticing Magdalena, realized that something alarming was afoot. As Duke Gothmord approached with a new torture implement, the mercenary fired a shot from his pistol at the seemingly psychotic actor, wounding him in the shoulder. He leapt from the box and ran through the crowd towards backstage, amidst whoops and screams and confusion from those around him. The audience, thinking this some experimental contrivance of the play, applauded uproariously as the scene ended and the curtain fell. Intermission began.

play

At intermission, Armand slipped quietly into Robin’s box and, stealthily, slipped poison purchased at the Venom Mart of Cobweb Cliffs, into the fairy’s wine. In addition, he attempted to cats a charm over the fey, to further endear him to the performance, but this failed to penetrate his resistance to such magic. Fortunately, Robin did not notice.

Backstage, Magdalena was untied by Sprigley, while the wounds of the actor were treated, and Sprigley managed to convince him that the bullet was supposed to be a blank. Meanwhile, up in the rafters, Garvin and Caulis’ familiar could hear what sounded like approaching buzzing – like a swarm of wasps approaching the theatre. Moments later a group of ragtag waspkin – some missing limbs or eyes or antennae, others garbed in rags – appeared at the rear entrance. Vespidae, backstage, greeted them.

“We have come, Thirteenth Queen,” one said.

“The Royalists approach. They mean to kill your Grace. But we shall not allow it!”

Vespidae, mind reeling, nodded, and sent out a pheromone mist in response. Thrust into this unexpected role, she decided to play her part as best she could.

“We’ll fight here,” she said. “Stage-illusionists… could you disguise these waspkin? They’re, ah, extras for the big battle. They’re supposed to look like evil fairies.”

The grumbling stage-wizards complained about the sudden change, but given the close relationship between Vittoria and the party, consented to these alterations.

The intermission buzzed in more than one way, as audience-members gossiped, remarking on the bloodiness and horror of the torture scene and the boldness of Sprigley’s “experimental” intervention.

The curtain rose on the finale of the play, beginning with the scene of Robin Redcap’s liberation. Scheming with the witch – played now by the original actress – the Robin character finds a way to wriggle free of his magical servitude, wreaking vengeance on the Duke. As the final scene of bloodletting began – in which Robin was supposed to rampage through the keep in fury – the waspkin Royalists burst into the theatre from the foyer, having swarmed in the front door. At this moment, stage illusionists bewitched the attackers to resemble “good” or “Seelie” fairies, all gossamer wings and light. Meanwhile Vesdpidae, lurking backstage with her motley band of followers similarly ensorceled to appear as “evil” fairies, rushed forwards, and the battle was joined.

The ensuing combat was bloody and spectacular, equal parts battle-dance and genuine battle, illusion-clad waspkin falling left and right, javelins flying. Sprigley, back onstage, joined the brutal melee. The real Robin Redcap, gleeful, watched the carnage with obvious satisfaction, while his stage double snarled commands to the fairy troops. The audience, impressed with what they believed to be special effects, went wild. Garvin sniped from the rafters, picking off waspkin Royalists… but then, with a final charge, the Royalists swarmed Vespidae, thrusting javelins through the drone’s body. She quivered and fell still, a look of absolute peace on her face, her deathwish finally satisfied, her last performance complete, her longed-for sacrifice at last consummated. In the frenzy the real Robin Redcap stormed onstage, leaping in a single bound, setting about him with vicious claws, tearing waspking apart left and right.

At this moment, Garvin acted, unwilling to let his companion die. Using a pocketwatch snatched from the cabinet of curiosities of the Van Lurken house which he had later learned had the power to modify time, he rewound the time-stream by a few moments and, just before the Royalists descended on Vespidae, fired a magical bolt into the stage-floor. Arcane darkness blossomed from the bolt, obscuring everything in shadow.

The darkness cleared like tenebrous mist. Bodies lay in pools of waspkin blood… but Vespidae was nowhere to be seen. If she was dead, her body had vanished – or, perhaps, some other fate had befallen her, for several of her rebels were missing as well. The audience went wild with applause and horrified delight, and Robin, clapping maniacally, vanished from the box, leaving behind a smell of carrion and black roses. The surviving Royalists, unable to locate their quarry, fled into the night.

The stage-hands would later report that they were too confused in the slaughter to notice if Vespidae and some of her forces had slipped away. Was she dead, or had she disappeared, to take up the mantle of the Thirteenth Queen?

Only time would tell…

Hex, Session X – Actual Play – “The Yellow Sign Pt. 1”

The characters in this session were:

  • Armand Percival Reginald Francois Eustace de la Marche III, a suspiciously pale, apparently human noble and sorcerer, and certainly not a ghoul (how dare such a thing be suggested).
  • Cephalus T. Murkwater, a dagonian barrister and monk, specializing in martial arts and magical labour law.
  • Garvin Otherwise, a human rogue and burglar of the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild, with a very, very peculiar past and a zoog pet, Lenore.
  • An ancient and enigmatic Lengian cleric of the Mother of Spiders, name unknown. She wears bulky ecclesiastical garments covering an uncertain number of limbs and goes by “Sister.”
  • Vespidae, a waspkin bard/cleric – a sacred dancer with a deathwish, shunned by the waspkin community for complicated ritualistic reasons, and a devoted follower of the Queen in Yellow.

XP Awarded: 650 XP.

In order to become a full hierophant of the Queen in Yellow, an initiate must claim the Yellow Sign – but to do so they must undergo a unique ceremony at the Temple of the Queen in Yellow, in Faunsweald. Vespidae, having adopted the Queen in Yellow as her new goddess after being banished from her home-nest – having inadvertently survived a ceremonial death-dance and thus been declared a pariah by other waspkin – now sought to become such an hierophant, and to this end, gathered her companions together at the Queen’s Fane.

Faunsweald

The district of Faunsweald was sleepy during the day and raucous at night, when the many theatres open their doors and the taverns open their taps. Theatre designs varied – from the older theatres of wood and plaster, open to the air, to newer closed theatres of stone and marble, most prominently including the resplendent Chiaroscuro and Fates theatres. There were a number of posters plastered about town advertising an upcoming performance of The Tragical History of Robin Redcap by renowned playwright Vittoria Wolfsheart. The play was further advertised by a man dressed in red and carrying a scythe, comically menacing passersby and cajoling them to attend the play, with threats of gruesome dismemberment and magical pranks if they refuse to purchase tickets.

The Temple of the Queen was Yellow is an extrusion of the Old City from below – a Librarian structure, alien and eerily organic, erupting from the cobblestone streets like some weird tumour. Unlike temples like that of the Mother of Spiders, the main sanctum of the Queen’s temple was open to all. Hierophants in sallow robes passed in and out of its eerie depths. As the group assembled at the temple entrance, a small gnome gyropter flapped through the air and descended into the nearby square, the gnome tinkerers Wanda and Edgar Cogswright appearing. Moments later a carriage arrived to disgorge the resplendently dressed Vittoria Wolfsheart, followed closely by an animated clay horse on which rode the arcane sculptress Magdalena Rotterthorpe – it seemed Vespidae had invited half the town to her initiation ceremony! She was, after all, now attended by a small retinue of clockwork and animated duplicates of herself: waspkin statuettes and automata, crafted by Magdalena and the Cogswrights, purchased dearly by Vespidae using her share of the adventuring funds.

suitors

Inside, the temple resembled a surreal art studio as much as a church. Massive, nightmarish murals, paintings, and tapestries covered the walls, and bizarre, abstract sculptures like demented angels loomed over everything. Despite the vastness of the interior – indeed, the temple seems larger on the inside – the main sanctum felt cluttered and cramped, thousands of strange artworks crowding against one another. Many were enchanted to move, speak, and change forms. Hierophants of the Queen in Yellow wander the chamber, some singing or dancing, others reciting sermons somewhere between religious chants and lunatic poetry. The space was disorderly, chaotic, and creative, lit with floating magical fires in a thousand colours, many of them indescribable.

A thin man with blue-black hair approached, clad in the garb of the Queen in Yellow – Ambrose Vasseur, the poet-hierophant the party encountered back in the caverns of the spiderfolk.

“Ah, Vespidae,” Ambrose said, bowing. “I have been selected to instruct you in your initiation. Are you prepared?”

Vespidae indicated the affirmative.

“Good. The process of initiation involves what is known as the Carcosan Rite,” Ambrose said. “This ritual must be carried out in the catacombs beneath the Temple of the Queen in Yellow – a part of the Old City. You must descend into the depths of the Temple’s lower levels, the Catacombs of Hyperreality, passing through several tests along the way. Go warily, for sometimes malignant things creep into the tunnels form elsewhere. Beware the Feaster from Afar, and also those of the Lost – failed initiates driven mad by the Rite. You will find a chamber of masks – all those who will participate in the ritual should don one of these Pallid Masks.  Deeper below, you will find a certain chamber, within which is an artwork of fantastic subtlety and ancient power. It is here that the Carcosan Rite itself will take place. The celebrant who wishes to achieve the Yellow Sign must recite a prayer to the Queen in Yellow while sacrificing a work of art within the sacred space. This will activate the Librarian Masterpiece, and the final test will be initiated. I can tell you nothing more of the substance of the Rite – you must discover it for yourself.”

Ambrose looked over the group. “Celebrants are welcome to attend to the ceremony and aid Vespidae in her induction… but be warned. The Catacombs of Hyperreality are not without their dangers.” With this, Ambrose handed Vesdpiae a yellow robe – made for the waspkin’s many-limbed body – and led the celebrants to the back of the Temple and through a narrow doorway into a winding tunnel that zigzagged back and forth in a convoluted tangle – it was difficult to follow its meandering, but Vespidae got the feeling it should have doubled back on itself at several points. Here and there another corridor branched off the main tunnel, sometimes opening into other chambers where hierophants worked on art projects ranging from massive sculptures to colossal murals. The group had not descended below the surface, confirming that the interior of the Temple of the Yellow Queen must be much, much larger within than it appeared outside.

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Eventually they reached a spiral ramp winding down into darkness in a large antechamber, its purplish stone contours eerily organic, giving it the appearance of an open mouth or some other orifice. A subtle music emanated from below, faint but unmistakable. The gnomes, Edgar and Wanda, decided to remain above, but both Magdalena and Vittoria continued with the rest of the party as they made their descent.

What followed was a shifting, seemingly infinitely branching series of tunnels and paths, winding in a crazed profusion through the earth in ways that seemed to defy all rational order. Vespidae led the group onwards, following the music emanating from below. Before long the group had wandered down a tunnel infested with a vibrant yellowish moss, filling the air with pungent spores. Even a slight inhalation of these spores instantly caused colours to become more vibrant and sounds more intense; the haunting music throughout the tunnels here became somehow stranger and more unnervingly beautiful.

It wasn’t long before the hallucinations started.

Cephalus was convinced his hands were fish. Garvin scampered about, yelling and chirruping, in the belief that he had become his zoog pet, Lenore, while Lenore had become him. In the resulting chaos the party delved deeper and deeper into the infinite gloom of the Catacombs of Hyperreality, till eventually the spores wore off. Something, now, seemed to be following them; they could hear wet fluttering noises from behind in the dark. They stumbled across the corpses of two twisted, only vaguely-humanoid creatures sprawingl in the middle of a tunnel, crusted black blood-stains beneath their crumpled, deformed cadavers. Judging from their rodent-like and pseudo-canine features the things were ghouls of a particularly degenerate breed. Both had had the tops of their heads neatly removed as if by a saw or some incredibly sharp blade. Their brains were missing, the inside of their skulls caked in more dried blood. Both were dressed in the shredded, mouldering remnants of yellow robes.

“The Feaster from Afar?” Armand speculated, listening again for the moist sucking sounds in the darkness behind them.

They hurried on through a bewildering series of rooms, lingering briefly over an ancient dais seemingly with the ability to distort time. Eventually they stumbled into a chamber with a huge pool of perfectly reflective liquid like a vast mirror. Vespidae peered within and looked upon her reflection, which looked back with obvious terror, twisting around to look behind her.

“It’s coming!” the reflection said fearfully. “Let me out!” It reached out, but Vespidae ignored the vision. Still, the sucking sounds had returned, and the party hurried on, deeper and deeper, still haunted by the occasional hallucination. They stumbled through a looted archive, long divested of ancient texts, in which a kind of den had been created, with some of the niches and shelves padded with detritus to form makeshift bedding. Gnawed, cracked bones were scattered on the blood-stained floor. Seeing ghouls stirring in the darkness they fled yet deeper, passing aseries of hideous carvings adorning the walls; though of obviously Librarian design, they were of humanoid appearance, resembling a group of masked revelers engaged in an orgiastic bacchanal. As the party walked down the passage the carvings animated, wrenching themselves from the wall, beseeching the celebrants to join the revel, but Sister’s use of calm emotions temporarily quieted their desires.

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Next the party came to a chamber with a number of pedestals fashioned from the same dark, purplish stone as the rest of the tunnels – seven of them. Upon each rests a pallid metal mask that perfectly fit the visage of one of the seven people in the room.

“These must be meant for us,” Cephalus mused.

“I suppose we should put them on, then…” Armand said, with characteristic detachment.

As they donned the masks, the horror behind them once again grew loud, and the group decided to see what was chasing them. Armand summoned a minor illusion of the group while the real celebrants ducked down a side passage and the thing drifted into view: a black, sac-like thing, which to the learned eyes of the sorcerer was obviously not native to this plane. It possessed a bewildering array of shriveled tendrils tipped with dripping razor-like claws, and its very appearance further strained the already-frayed sanity of those present. It seemed to sniff the air as its derangement spread, trying to scent the reek of madness like some psychic bloodhound, but then the trap was sprung, a conjured cloud of daggers viciously tearing at its flesh, javelins and crossbow bolts from Vespidae and Garvin striking its black, oozing flesh. Cephalus leapt forwards with a flurry of blows, and the thing squealed and sent a blast of psychic energy towards the celebrants, inducing crushing headaches and cranial bleeding, blood spurting from nostrils, eyes, and ears as they thing’s horrific, ab-real wail rent space, time, and thought. Its tentacles flickered out, attempting to caress Cephalus’ squamous flesh, but the dagonian struck again, and the thing was at last dispatched, deflating like some monstrous balloon of shadows and otherworldly slime.

Bloodied but alive, the group pressed on, when a woman in filthy, tattered yellow robes lurched into view. She wore a ghastly, uncanny mask made of some pale, unknown substance. In one hand she carried a paintbrush dripping with blood; in the other, the severed, quasi-canine head of a monstrous ghoul. She used the brush to paint the walls of the tunnel with curious symbols.

The woman looked at the group with mad eyes.

“Who are you?” Vespidae asked.

“Jeanette,” she replied, tilting her head strangely. “That blood…” she said, eyeing Cephalus.

“The Feaster from Afar. We killed it.”

Jeanette whooped for joy, spraying blood throughout the passage. “You have slain it! It has hunted me for years, now…”

“Years?”

“Yes. I sought the Yellow Sign, but never attained it. I… I lost my sacrifice. My artwork.”

“Then why not return to the surface?”

“The Catacombs of Hyperreality do not permit it. Once a celebrant undertakes the Rite, it must be completed.” She giggled, unnervingly. Sister and Garvin exchanged glances, Garvin fingering his hand crossbow.

“Well, you should come with us!” Vespidae said. “Do you know where the entrance to Carcosa is?”

Jeanette nodded, pointing down a tunnel with her bloody paintbrush. “This way. I will show you.” She led on, Vespidae following while the others shared wary looks.

Once again the party heard footsteps behind them. Garvin, putting a finger to his lips, slipped back into the shadows and backtracked, discovering a band of feral-looking, sinewy creatures with greyish-yellow, scabrous skin prowling in the gloom. Hunched and quasi-humanoid, they had grotesque faces resembling those of bats and dogs and tails like those of monstrous rats. Their skins had been ritually scarified and some carried jagged bone weapons. Their mouths, crowded with fangs, dripped with slaver. These, two, were garbed in filthy yellowish robes – perhaps the descendants of initiates long lost in the Catacombs of Hyperreality.

Garvin returned, and Vespidae conjured an illusion of the Feaster from Afar, sending the phantasm back along the hall, while Sister added wet sucking sounds. There was a chittering of fear and the warped things retreated, fleeing from the illusion.

Jeanette, meanwhile, led on into a vast chamber whose walls had been painted with an incredibly elaborate scene which utterly surrounded all who stepped within. The scene was that of another world, marked by the twin suns, pitch black in colour, sinking below the horizon of a vast lake swathed in mist. There were a plethora of malformed moons overhead. The sky was the colour of bone and dotted with ebon stars. The scene was that of an endless waste, a desolate plain of dead grass. Perched on the shore of the lake, rising from the eerie mist, was a resplendent city – a series of spires and domes, ornate and ominous, like and yet unlike the Old City of the Librarians. The architecture seemed less alien, somehow, and yet more unnerving for its slight familiarity. It was like a city half-remembered from a fever dream. On the floor of the chamber was inscribed the glyph of the Yellow Sign.

Vespidae and Jeanette both prayed, reciting the Carcosan Rite. Abruptly, the celebrants found that the walls of the chamber were no longer there – the landscape merely extended around them, seemingly quite real. They had somehow entered the Masterpiece. Black water lapped at the shores of Lake Hali and the shadows lengthened as the twin suns set and the group pressed on towards the city – Carcosa.

Near the edge of the shore was a sinister black object fashioned from what might be obsidian. Though no one actually saw the statue change shape it seemed to have assumed a new form each time it was looked at – an abstract arch or twisted column, or other forms – misshapen creatures of unknown varieties with aspects vaguely reminiscent of fungi, jellyfish, sponge, worm, and anemones. The group circled the statue warily, but Magdalena became utterly fascinated and took out a sketchbook.

“Please, go on without me,” the sculptress said. “I can’t give up this opportunity…” She began sketching wildly. Vittoria, her former paramour, smirked wryly. Everyone else shrugged and continued towards the city.

sime-29

Overheard they could see several winged shapes flitting amongst the clouds – things somewhere between bat, bird, and insect. They circled above, clearly scanning the ground for prey, until one of the creatures broke from the flock and began to descend. It was only through Sister’s timely use of thaumaturgy that the Byakhee was spooked, shrieking in alarm at the conjured chittering of some massive spider-thing and scattering its fellows. The party hurried onwards, into the city of Carcosa.

The streets of the alien city of Carcosa lay empty as night fell. Vespidae could not shake the feeling that she had been here before. The haunting music all of the group had heard since entering the Catacombs of Hyperreality seemed to emanate from a huge palace at the centre of the city. There were suggestions, here and there, that some catastrophe has recently befallen Carcosa; many doors were engraved with mysterious glyphs, perhaps indicating some sort of curse or plague or other calamity. The windows were dim. The only building where anything seemed to stir is the Palace.

A pair of masked guards – human in appearance, though with a disquietingly alien quality to their movements – presided over the doors of the Palace. Seeing those approaching to be suitably masked, the guards relaxed, and Vespidae swiftly explained her mission, describing the other party-members as her trusted companions and guests. Suitably persuaded, the guards relented and opened the Palace doors, revealing a vast space beyond.

the-mask-of-the-red-death

Within the palace the party found themselves in a huge, opulent chamber of several levels, teeming with masked men and women of the same ilk as the guards at the gate. They were attired in splendid but alien costumes, dripping with gemstones of unthinkable colours and perfumed with unfathomable scents. Most were engaged in feasting, dancing, and drinking; the food consists of meats and fruit of unknown origin, while much of the drink is some sort of pale, greenish wine. A huge ebon clock presided over the carousing masses, counting down to the thirteenth hour.

The group set about exploring the chambers of the Palace. In each room they found a new gallery, all packed with revelers. The walls were crammed with paintings, uncountable thousands of them – although among them, Vespidae spotted some of the paintings burned at the Van Lurken House. Those parts of the floor not filled with party-goers were taken up by statues and fountains and similar artworks. All of the art ever sacrificed to the Queen in Yellow seemed to have rematerialized here.

ball

Sister, Armand, and Cephalus were all being drawn into the crowd, while Vespidae flitted nimbly above, oblivious to the temptations of the guests. Offered food, the party-members wisely refused, but Sister became drawn into the strange, rhythmic dance of the party-goers. Cephalus force his way through the crowd to the Lengian, who was being swept along by several masked and merry dancers, barely managing to extricate the priestess of the Spider Goddess before she was subsumed in the churning crowd of the otherworldly revelers.

As the thirteenth hour approached, murmurs of the Queen begin to circulate. The hands of the clock at last ticked over, and as the clock chimed thirteen a figure descended from a grand stair. Clad in a voluminously tattered yellow gown and wearing a pale mask, the Queen in Yellow took her seat to preside over the masquerade.

“There is one here who would swear themselves to my service,” a voice says from behind the mask. “Approach, hierophant.”

Vespidae buzzed forwards.

“What do you offer for my gallery?” the Queen asked.

“A dance,” Vespidae said, and began her most elaborate ritual dance, a dance inspired by the ceremonial dances of the waspkin, yet unfettered by their strictures and dogmas, a dance of passion and inspiration rather than mechanical repetition. The crowd had grown hushed as all watched the would-be hierophant flit and whirl, surrounded by the statuettes and automata. The dance climaxed in the ritual destruction of these simulacra, incorporating burning hands to lend their sacrifice an incandescent flair. The Queen sat silent for a second, then gently applauded; moments later her party-guests burst into uproarious applause. All quietened as the goddess – or whatever avatar of her they saw before them – spoke again.

yellow

“I make few demands of my subjects,” the Queen in Yellow declared. “But this I require: all those who would serve me must endeavour to shape their lives into a work of art, to pursue Beauty in its multitudinous forms, without cheapening themselves with the sullied tawdriness of morality, justice, or reason. Are you willing to reshape yourself into a Living Symbol?”

Vespidae nodded. “Yes, my Queen!”

The Queen in Yellow nodded. Jeanette now came forwards and fell to her knees. “I have nothing to offer,” she said. “But I wish to remain here, and serve you.”

The Queen nodded again. “So it shall be, celebrant.” She raised her hand, and in that moment the scene seemed to dissolve, and now the party were in a chamber with exquisitely painted walls, a rendering of the scene they had just left. There was no sign of Magdalena, or Jeanette; both, it seemed, had been left behind in the artwork, and, indeed, a tiny figure which would be Magdalena could be glimpsed through a window, still studying the statue on the shore of Lake Hali, while Jeanette knelt before her goddess. Around Vespidae’s neck dangled the eldritch holy symbol she had come seeking: The Yellow Sign.

A single exit led up a spiraling flight of stairs, which brought them immediately back to the surface into the Fane of the Queen in Yellow in the city above. Ambrose greeted them.

“Welcome, hierophant, to the Order of the Queen in Yellow.”

“Magdalena!” Vespidae said, alarmed. “I need to go back. We left her there!”

Ambrose shook his head. “The stars have shifted,” he said. “The way to Carcosa is now closed.”

Hex, Session IX – Actual Play – “The Nightmare of Cobweb Cliffs”

The characters in this session were:

  • Armand Percival Reginald Francois Eustace de la Marche III, a suspiciously pale, apparently human noble and sorcerer, and certainly not a ghoul (how dare such a thing be suggested).
  • An ancient and enigmatic Lengian cleric of the Mother of Spiders, name unknown. She wears bulky ecclesiastical garments covering an uncertain number of limbs and goes by “Sister.”
  • Sprigley Gilette, a hardboiled, cigar-chomping human mercenary and veteran of several brutal wars, and a relatively new arrival in Hex.
  • Vespidae, a waspkin bard – a sacred dancer with a deathwish, shunned by the waspkin community for complicated ritualistic reasons. Now a devoted follower of the Queen in Yellow.

XP Awarded: 700 XP.

The Sisters of the Nunnery of the Mother of Spiders were in a state of crisis. Something had escaped from the depths of their mysterious temple into the labyrinthine caverns within Cobweb Cliffs, the Lengian District of Hex. Sister, a member of the order currently on a kind of “sabbatical” from her ecclesiastical duties, was called in to assist the spidery nuns. She brought with her the waspkin Vespidae, the sorcerer Armand, and the mercenary Sprigley, who, having recovered from his bout with insanity after his last trip to the Old City, had become devoted to a strange, demonic entity, his body inscribed with diabolic tattoos. Bringing with her the sheep known as “Cosmo,”* the group headed to Cobweb Cliffs.

*See the Ultimate Contagion Part 2.

cobweb-cliffs

Like Stingsworth or Croakmarsh, the district of Cobweb Cliffs is like another world. Lengians and their arachnid pets and servants make up almost all of the population here, moving between the eight distinct layers of the district. Everything here is coated with webs, with the thickest wefts of spidersilk supporting entire buildings. The architecture here is as alien as the beings who dwell in the district, all weird angles and eerie decorations, giving the place a crazed, oneiric illogic. To Lengians, of course, Cobweb Cliffs simply feels like home.

The group headed swiftly for the Temple of the Mother of Spiders at the top of the district, on the Street-Not-To-Be-Described. We shall refrain, in honour of the holy edicts of the Mother of Spiders, from speaking the Street-Not-To-Be-Described, since even by saying this much we flirt with blasphemy. Let us instead speak of the things which can be seen from the streets web-swathed vantage: the seven lower tiers of Cobweb Cliffs spread out steeply below, the lowest swathed in midst, and beyond, the districts of Mainspring and Little Pandemonium, the Dreamer’s Quarter, and Gloomway, the Feypark to the north, and to the west, the brooding eaves of the Tangle, past the city wall which bisects the Cliffs. The Radula can be glimpsed to the south, a great green-brown tendril of polluted water, swarming with boats and spanned by the glittering, statue-encrusted length of the Bridge of Sins. The temples of other faiths can be seen below, the Infernal Basilica of the Chthonic Gods and the gleaming glass-and-metal pyramid of the Magistra’s Cathedral. While such buildings may be larger than the Lengian Temple – at least on the surface – now in the city stand higher.

Casting its long shadow over the rest of Cobweb Cliffs was the Temple of the Mother of Spiders, deity of dreams, schemes, poison, sleep, and death. All but the outermost chambers of this imposing , tiered structure were forbidden save to Lengians, guarded by several of the multi-limbed warrior nuns of the order. Inside, the architecture was swathed with cobwebs, for spiders scurried everywhere, spinning their webs between the huge columns that supported the ceiling, half-obscuring the intricate geometric designs that decorated the walls and floor – though the temple’s inconsistent gravity often made this distinction unclear. The Reverend Mother Yaan Tsang emerged from a nearby doorway in one “wall” and walked down towards the party after being alerted of their arrival. She was a statuesque, pale Lengian with six well-muscled arms, her head partially swathed in the habit of the order. As one of the highest ranking members of the Nunnery, one of the eight members of the Conclave of Matriarchs, she was also one of the most powerful Lengians in Hex, the spiderfolk being an intensely religious, even theocratic people.

“Ah, you have come,” she said sternly, looking you up and down with her many eyes. “There is little time to waste, so I will be brief. But first, we must find somewhere more private to speak. Come.” She gestured with several hands to a doorway on another wall, indicating for the group to follow. They stepped inside a room with walls elaborately padded with spidersilk, beneath which could be glimpsed intricate Lengian sigils. “Secrets spoken in this room cannot be divulged aloud save through powerful magic,” the Reverend Mother said, closing and locking the door. “Anyone who breaks this enchantment will be subject to a terrible curse – understood?”

The party agreed to abide by these restrictions.

“Very well then,” she continued. “First, some background is necessary for those unfamiliar with our faith. Part of the initiation into Mother of Spiders’ worship involves a pilgrimage throughout Leng, in the Dreamlands. The pilgrimage is not conducted bodily but rather through lucid dreaming, here in the depths of the temple. Initiates are bound in a cocoon of spidersilk and given a dose of a powerful sedative poison, putting them into a coma for many weeks and allowing them to visit the Dreamlands for an extended period. At the end of this quest, they awaken having visited some of the most holy sites of the Mother of Spiders, glimpsing her Great Web.

“Unfortunately, some do not pass this test, and remain comatose forever. In rarer cases yet, the sleeper who awakens is not the one who fell asleep in the first place. One of our initiates, Sho-Ramsara, slept for half a year, before awakening quite suddenly. At first she seemed to behave normally, but then other initiates began to go missing. Certain signs implicated Sho-Ramsara, and when we confronted her the thing inhabiting her body revealed itself, striking several of our initiates and escaping the Temple. A being of nightmare from the darkest depths of the Dreamlands has possessed her, and now haunts the waking world wearing her flesh. Already there have been reports of disappearances in Cobweb Cliffs – we fear the thing is hunting, using the caverns beneath the Cliffs as its lair.

“We are unsure the extent of the monstrosity’s powers or its exact nature, but like many beings of nightmare it can warp reality to some degree, and wields the power of fear. Ideally, Sho-Ramsara should be kept alive – there may yet be a chance of saving her and sending the creature back where it came from, if you can bring her back to the temple. As a last resort, however, you may need to kill her to prevent the nightmare from wreaking more destruction. If you do so, we will reduce the payment by half. Are these terms acceptable?”

Again, the party agreed to this arrangement. Sister spent some time in the nunnery’s libraries seeking scrolls of calm emotions and other spells, and then the group set out, heading for the nearest entrance to the tunnels within the cliffs.

Maps below are from Sprigley’s player.

Cobweb Cliffs 1Their first stop was a cavern used as a spider farm, with countless thousands of the creatures spinning their webs throughout the room, clusters of eggs scattered throughout. Mesh structures, trellises, stalagmites, and stalactites were all covered with webs. Some of the bigger spiders were kept in spacious (but tight-barred) cages. Lengian spider-farmers clambered throughout the complex, feeding their charges insects, collecting silk, and milking venom from some of the larger arachnids. A few small outbuildings had been built on the ground or along the walls of the farm. There was also a pen in which a number of pallid hogs can be seen. The desiccated, bloodless husks of a number of piglets  were evident in a few of the giant spider cages.

Upon questioning the farmers, the party discovered this was the Tsothoth Spider Farm, a family business that produced a great deal of silk both for the weavers on the Street of Weavers and the nearby Venom Mart. The folk here seemed distrustful of outsiders but warmed to Sister, as a traveling cleric. On asking about any sign of trouble, they discovered that several of their hogs had recently been snatched. The farmers believed that those responsible might be members of the so-called “Funnel Web Gang,” a group of bandits lairing somewhere deep below the Cliffs.

Cobweb Cliffs 2

The party began making their way deeper into the tunnels. They soon came acrosstTwo Lengians clad all in spidersilk uniforms, who had cornered a thin, human man with blue-black hair, garbed in yellow robes and wearing a Yellow Sign round his neck; he looked battered and beleaguered. The masked, armoured Lengians had an authoritative stance and made no effort to conceal their activities as they advanced upon him with clearly violent intentions. Sister recognized the Lengians as members of the Ebon Web, the theocratic police force of Cobweb Cliffs

“Please! I’ve done nothing wrong! They’re going to kill me!” the man exclaimed.

Investigation revealed the man to be Ambrose Vasseur, a poet and hieorophant of the Queen in Yellow, performing his work in public in the Cliffs. Under the law of the Ebon Web this activity had been interpreted as proselytizing, a prohibited action in the Cliffs. Vespidae, seeing a fellow worshiper of the Queen in Yellow, felt compelled to intervene. Fortunately Sister was able to use her clout with the Temple to dissuade the Ebon Web officers, who slunk off into the tunnels. Ambrose gratefully thanked the party and advised Vespidae to find him at the Fane of the Queen in Yellow.

Lengian

The party pressed on, stopping briefly at the Venom Mart – a dim cavern lit by a few dull, greenish lamps, containing a bustling market crowded with numerous stalls and the customers perusing them. While the merchants in this luridly lit bazaar were almost all Lengian, the buyers were more diverse, with several humans, cambions, ghouls, dagonians, and trollbloods amongst them. They could see a fair number of gang and guild insignia here, displayed with an openness usually reserved for Corvid Commons. The goods here took a variety of forms – powders, vials of liquid, and even globes of gas could all be seen. The Mart, Sister explained, was an open secret in Cobweb Cliffs, operating beyond the control of the City Watch. The party bought several poisons here to induce unconsciousness, hoping that they would prove useful in subduing their quarry.

Delving yet deeper, the group entered the lower tunnels of the Cliffs. Continuing their explorations, the party next discovered the corpse of a Lengian sprawling against one wall of a dank cavern, limbs limp. The cadaver bore an expression of absolute terror on her face, her several eyes frozen wide in fright. There were no obviously fatal injuries; however, the wall behind her body was bizarrely changed: a cluster of roving, many-coloured eyes, blinking and rolling, some watching them intently, grows from the rock like a lichen. Armand used the spell detect thoughts on the eyes and was assailed by a million million thoughts, a slurry of surreal images, lusts, fears, anxieties, nightmarish monsters and moans of ecstasies – like tapping into the collective unconscious, a stream of dream-energy sluicing through his mind. Still benumbed by reading The Book of the Void, Armand was able to cling to sanity, but nearly lost himself in the primal welter of oneiric puissance.

Close inspection of the corpse revealed it had a mysterious Aklo tattoo, which Sister identified as signifying affiliation with the Funnel-Web Gang. Further on, the party discovered a cavern whose walls seemed mottled with some sort of fungus. Drawing closer, though, they realized the strange growths extruded from the rock were actually a series of mouths from various species, some toothless and ancient, others monstrously fanged. The mouths whispered and spoke to one another in a babbling torrent of languages, some speaking quasi-intelligible snatches of conversation, others curses softly, or singing nonsense verse. They had not ventured much further when a group of eight Lengian cutthroats emerged from web-swathed nooks and similar vantage points and then sprang to attack, hurling nets and blowing darts to try and subdue the party. After a brief scuffle in which several of the cutthroats and party-members were injured, Sister convinced them to desist, claiming that they could protect the Funnel-Web Gang  from the creature hunting them.Cobweb Cliffs 3

The Funnel-Web cutthroats led the party through a hidden path concealed by a thick cobweb. Down a short tunnel and down a web-swathed trapdoor they found a series of small caves, the walls covered in more webs. A few bunks, tables, and other furnishings were scattered about, as were racks of weapons: short swords, knives, blowguns, darts, and nets. Here they met the leader of the Funnel-Web Gang – a mysterious Lengian man, Shenzirr, swathed in dark purple clothes and spidersilk armour. Conferral with the wary Lengian gang-leader revealed much about the band of criminals, as much religious dissidents and undercity scum – a group striving against the dogmatic control of the Temple of the Mother of Spiders, gathering strength in a guerilla war against the authorities of Cobweb Cliffs. They had encountered Sho-Ramsara several times, and, it proved, could lead the party to the possessed Spider-Nun’s lair – deep in the Old City, below the cavernous tunnels of the Cliffs. Shenzirr dispatched a guide to aid the group in their journey below.

After recovering their strength, the party and their guide set out, the Lengian thief leading them deep into the earth. They passed the corpse of a leathery-winged, thin-limbed creature with curved horns, approximately humanoid but lacking any vestige of a face, which lay crumpled on the tunnel floor, its stiff limbs upraised. One its arms was broken and its wings were badly torn, but it was killed from a slash to its throat. A peculiar, eerie music with no identifiable source lingered in the air around the corpse.

“A Nightgaunt,” the Funnel-Web gangster said. “A being from the Dreamlands – a manifestation of childhood nightmares. They’ve been breeding down here, in the dark, brought through somehow to the waking world. They stray up into our territory sometimes…”

The walls of the narrow tunnel beyond sprouted dozens of grasping, clawing hands, grabbing and groping at the air. They weren’t form of rock but of flesh, erupting out of the wall in horrible profusion. Sister eyed the hands and then produced one of her scrolls of calm emotions. Casting the spell on the arms, they became abruptly slack and inactive.

Cobweb Cliffs 4

“Let’s hurry,” she urged. As Cosmo the sheep passed, on a whim Sister decided to cast the spell again, this time on the sheep. A strange shiver passed through the being, the stars and nebulae roiling within its body twinkling strangely.

“What did you feel?” Sister asked, curious.

“A strange sensation. Countless trillions of souls… all, for a moment, at peace.”

It seemed that if indeed Cosmo was now the host to other realities, spells cast on it could effect such realities. The enormity of this possibility was too much to take in for the time being, and the party pressed on, lowering themselves via spidersilk rope down a narrow chute and into a deeper level of the caves. At the bottom, they realized they had left Cosmo above… but then the sheep nudged Sister’s foot, having somehow appeared below with them.

A deep chasm gaped ahead, bereft of the helpful web bridges that elsewhere provided a means across such rifts. Bones could be glimpsed at the bottom. Vespidae simply flew across, planting pitons in the roof so that others could use more rope to shimmy their way across the chasm. Veering left at the next tunnel, the party entered a huge cavern; roosting on the ceiling like bats were dozens of leathery shapes – winged, spindly creatures, identical to the dead nightgaunt they’d seen before. Stealthily the group crept past, careful not to disturb the creatures. Cosmo simply levitated its way across the room, quite silent.

A huge doorway gaped ahead, perhaps fifty feet high, leading into a smooth-walled hall of stone beyond. The walls were carved with the glyphs of the Librarians, and the ceiling held up by titanic, tentacular statues, creatures somewhere between apes and octopi.

“An entrance to the Old City,” Sprigley noted, with a shudder from his last fateful venture into the Librarian tunnels.

Cobweb Cliffs 5

Beginning their explorations, the party first examined a stone door, using their knowledge of arcane Librarian glyphs to gain entrance to the room beyond. In the middle of this ovoid chamber was a kind of rounded pod that brought to mind a sarcophagus, with machinery and masses of convoluted conduits emerging from its sides. The pod had a door on its top which was currently open, revealing a large, empty space within. If this lid were closed, someone placed inside the pod would be in darkness. None knew what function the pod might serve. Sister volunteered to enter. At first, all was dark – but then the door opened, and Sister watched herself climbing out of the pod, moving backwards out of the chamber, everything seeming to flow in reverse. The party walked backwards out of the chamber, the door closed behind them, and they began to leave the Old City… Filled with a feeling of weightlessness, Sister “jumped” back into her body, having traveled backwards through time. She explained to her companions what had just occurred. A useful device indeed…

This mystery resolved, the party pressed on, deeper into the Old City. The walls of the next chamber dripped and oozed with a disgusting viscous slime, out of which temporarily resolved faces, mouths, hands, eyes, claws, tentacles, and other amorphous shapes. Hideous squelching sounds mingled with the cries, murmurs, and babbling of the many mouths. Moments later, as if responding to the presence of intruders, some of this abominable secretion glopped down off the wall and congealed into a gibbering, shapeless mass of metamorphic horror. The living nightmare slithered and scuttled and pulls itself forward, mewling and whining incoherently. Armand, quick with a frost-spell, slowed the creature long enough for the group to hurry into the next room.

A shattered portal stood at the centre of this chamber, which dripped with more of the repulsive slime. A Lengian – one of the gang of Funnel-Web cutthroats, judging from their garb – was trapped here, embedded waist-deep in the slime. Looming over the weakly struggling figure was a second Lengian, this one in the tattered remnants of a nun’s habit. As her prey whimpered and struggled she seems to be drawing some sort of energy from his mind, pressing two of her six hands to his temples. Though still recognizably Lengian her form was monstrously distorted, her limbs elongated, her features twisted into a ghastly expression of thirst. Strange movements could be seen beneath her robes, and something moved beneath her skin.

The fight was a frenzy of spells, bullets, and flickering limbs. Sister used calm emotions to free the cutthroat from the slime, the spell causing the nightmare-sludge to dissipate, while Vespidae, poisoned javelin in hand, flitted up to the Dream-Demon. The possessed nun launched herself at Sprigley, catching the warrior across the chest with her claws, even as she spoke words of fell magic, attempting to put some of her attackers to sleep. Bleeding and backing off from the flailing spider-monster, Sprigley fired a bullet from his enchanted pistol, the Verdant Gun, trapping Sho-Ramsara with suddenly interweaving vines and giving Vespidae time to administer the sleeping-poison purchased in the Venom Mart. Sho-Ramsara shuddered and was still, though the dream-demon within still thrashed and boiled within her flesh, quieted only temporarily through another scroll of calm emotions. Their quarry for the moment dispatched, the party retreated back into the previous room, only to find more of the squelching horrors had spawned. They hurried on, Armand launching fire spells to burn the nightmare-things, Sprigley firing off more rounds from his Verdant Gun to trap the horrors in place. With Sho-Ramsara secured they headed back to the surface.

Coming again to the cavern of the night-gaunts the group found the nest were awakened – and agitated. They rushed through, slashing with weapons, Vespidae hurling javelins, picking the creatures off, but there were dozens of the bat-like things, swarming in pursuit. Then Cosmo, turning in seeming irritation, let out a bleat of power. The ceiling of the night-gaunts’ cavern collapsed, crushing the leathery creatures with a terrible crash that made the very ground quake. Awed at this display from the eldritch sheep, the party hastened back towards the surface and to their promised reward.

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