Content Note: Sex & Violence. A mild R-Rating
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| Chaos Knight Slimed by the Purple Putresence By JLHB, © 2014 Kort'thalis Publishing |
Behind him the camp was a flurry of activity. Jonas explained his morning meditative practices and the elaborate diagrams in his Spellbook to Benne as she wrapped her arms around him. Mord joked brightly with Neela, Alil, and Sarra as they tidied the campsite. Wene and Jamart packed away the remains of the breakfast they had made from rations and local fruits and mushrooms. In spite of what little they had to work with, breakfast had been delicious. He just hoped it had not been his last.
"Does something trouble you, Korl?" The skinny, hatchet-faced knight-priest Tarrant stepped up beside him and fixed hi eyes on the same thing: the great twisting cloud of purple sludge in the sky not far off the coast.
"The Thing that Rots is close to shore. I am afraid that our paths will cross."
"What will happen, should we cross its path?"
"Have you not heard the stories, my firend? Some go mad looking at it, so it is said. It often just grabs people and eats them. It is known that the slime that drips out of it is a potent drug. But often deadly. It is also said that It's blood, should it be wounded, transforms a man into an ooze, and then petrifies him. All you can do about The Thing that Rots is to hide under shelter and wait for it to pass." We will go slow today. At best, we will get around this cove. I must always look for shelter."
"Am I to take it that if we wish to cover ground, we must get moving?"
The Sherpa nodded.
As they walked, they first tried to tune the massive horror out, but by midday they could hear it babbling obscenities on the wind. A stench like mold and rotting herbs wafted ahead of it, sickly to the point of overwhelming.
And then, at one point Korl shouted, "It is too close. We must run for shelter!"
He scoured the horizon, and spotted a hint of stone in the jungle. "This way!"
They crashed through the underbrush as the Purple Putrescene loomed ever closer overhead, choking them with its stench. Finally, they broke through the underbrush I to a clearing. Sheltered by Purple Banyans was the ruins of a cluster of ancient stone structures.
They could hear the patter of slime dripping down upon the leaves, Neela shouted when she found an archway into an enclosed building. The group, heroes, mercenaries, and former slaves piled into the entrance just as the foul shadow of the Putrescence fell overhead.
Once within, Jonas watched, fascinated, as rivulets of foul slime cascaded down in a curtain over the doorway.
Behind the Screen: I rolled for Koral to have a 2-die VSd6 roll to find shelter before the Putrescence got directly overhead.
Note: When you roll characters for The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence l, you may opt to re-roll two stats at the cost of rolling on the Darker Secrets table. It gives characters chances to have strange mutations, criminal pasts, bizarre obsessions, or shameful secrets. When I rolled Jonas he had 9, 10, or 11 in every stat, and a 5 in Charisma. If ever there was a character who would make a deal with the devil, it was him. I rolled an obsession and sexual paraphilua around slime. Holden's phropesied death and Tarrant's tentacle hand are other results from that table.
It took Jonas a moment to pull himself away from the cascade of sludge.
The rain-like patter of ichor falling from overhead put everyone on edge. There were numerous homes in the roof where branches of local jungle life pushed in.
They turned into a larger room, one of two beyond the crumbling stone walls and froze. Hunched in the center of the room were four brutish creatures. They were not quite gorillas; their features were too hideously human. And where a gorilla's arms are broad and strong, theirs were thin, spindly. Out of their shoulders grew multiple sets of long purple tentacles.
One turned slowly, as if not quite sure it had heard a sound, and they took in that it wore body paint in places, and a long lariat of human teeth and mummified ears around its neck. There was no doubt these creatures would not share the space willingly. Tarrant unsheathed his rapier with a speed and grace only possible for a man with a tentacle instead of bony joints in a sword arm, and struck the beast in the forehead, splitting its skull in a spray of blood.
Holden expected the sudden violence. His old military falchion was in his hands and crashing down on another ape-man's skull at neatly the same time. This one was not so easy. The sword lodged itself in the head as the creature screamed and gibbered, one eye rolled back in its head. Its tentacles flailed wildly.
Scarlett screamed in ecstasy when Mord drew her, and she cut a bright red streak through the air, but the enchanted blade did not connect with flesh.
Neela tried to deliver a killing blow, but was knocked back by a thrashing limb.
Jonas attempted to call up the magic of the dreamlands. Here on the Purple Islands, however, magic often acted strangely, He could feel the magic pour out, but nothing happened. The Island itself devoured the spell. Somewhere deep below the Earth, something stirred in response.
Behind the Screen: This battle started off very well, which was good, because I was terrified for the PCs. The Ape-Men are 4HD creatures, and my PCs were not all 2nd level at this point. Both Tarrant and Holden scored critical hits that resulted in severe head wounds. One of the brutes had 22 hit points. Holden's 17 damage was the only way they could have managed these foes.
It was a surprise when one of the shimmering gravity rods was thrust over Mord's shoulder in an attempt to strike. Benne had found a strange well of courage, and decided to fight alongside the party. Later she might have said it was to "win their trust", but at the time, it was pure instinct.
Even while Korl looked on in amazement, Wene and Jamart also took up loose stones and lobbed them overhead at the ape-creatures. Both had been slaves a long time, and neither had reason to trust Neela's words. And yet, they had found at least enough trust to stand their ground.
The same could not be said for Sarra and Alil. The red-headed beauty curled into a terrified ball and wept. Alil screamed and ran back outside, in spite of Korl's warnings.
Behind the Screen: I have treated every day as a new adventure for purposes of loyalty and Morale. In this case, the NPCs showed exceptional loyalty and bravery. I guess Neela's kindness and the bravery of the PCs has rubbed off. I will rethink the sinister intentions of some of them.
Tarrant pressed their advantage, he slung his rapier and lopped off the head that Holden was still trying to attack his blade from. Now the other two were beginning to surge forward. Neela clipped the tip of the tentacle off of one as it came.
That is when Jonas, Benne, and Korl pressed in from the back ranks, reaching out with gravity rods taken from the strange holographic projections that once enslaved much of their number. Where the rods touched, they twisted out spiraling cones of flesh from the creatures.
Desperately, the ape-men slashed and hammered with tentacles; Mord and Tarrant locked shields and fended off the blows.
The company pressed forward driving them back with the gravity rods, and Mord slashed out and hewed two of the creatures' tentacles, causing one beast to lift its head in a howl only to be hit in the face from a thrown rock. It collapsed into a bloody heap. Another lost a tusk to a second stone. Having its fellows, the last ape-thing lept up and pulled itself free of the building, leaving a tail of blood behind.
As Alil cowered under a thicket of gigantic leaves, she had been praying that they were strong enough to keep her safe and sheltered when one of the Ape -men bounded out of a hole in the building.
The creature locked furious eyes on her and howled. It leapt towards her, depserate to have some sort of revenge. In mid flight it was suddenly snatched out of the air by a massive purple tentacle. The creature managed one last shriek before it was drawn into the sky and crushed between the waiting teeth of one of the Putresence's many mouths.
Mord paused, listening to the whispers of Scarlett for a moment, and then grinned broadly.
"Well, it's cozier than I'd like, the staff are unfriendly, and I would not eat anything that came from the kitchen, but it is still the best roadhouse in Kravian."
The laughter was more from relief than humor, but it broke the tension.
Holden turned to help Sarra up, while Tarrant gave a fine oratory on the courage of the former slaves who chose to fight beside them. Mord had cares for neither. He grabbed a fistful of tentacles and began dragging the carcasses of the Ape-men out.
"I'll go see if Alil got eaten." he muttered to Neela.
"Keep your head low. That thing is still overhead."
"Y' left us behind back there," Mord scowled, mixing menace and Mischief on his face.
"Please," she pleaded, "It's not like that."
Mord watched her cast around for the best way to finesse him. She had already given herself away as a liar with fantastic tales of divine blood and royal lines. He mostly looked forward to seeing how far her lies would go.
"I just didn't want to have to see you get hurt." she affected doe eyes beautifully, wrapping her hands around her knees.
Mord couldn't help himself, he scoffed, because the other alternative was outright belly laughter, and that would ruin the game.
"Sweet, y'd clap as y' watch me die."
"No, I- I'm not like that?. "
"Aside from being dumb enough to risk gettin' y'rself eaten by that thing up there, an' full of it, what are you like?"
Alil crossed her arms under her bosom and pouted. "Churl!"
"The basest kind," he replied. "The sort who wouldn't hesitate to leave a highborn brat in the jungle, y'r highness."
"Yet here you are."
"This dance bores me."
"What dance is that?"
Th"e one I have danced with a dozen highborn maidens before you. Y'll pout, I'll tease. Then y'll try and slap me just so's I can grab y' by the wrist. Then comes biting of lips and the wiggling of y'r ass."
"And how does this dance end?"
Mord cracked a hungry smile. She bit her lip.
Tarrant sat in meditation, allowing the sounds of the jungle to wash over him. He tried to silence the storm of thoughts in his head. He, Holden, and Neela had had an - intense - discussion over the way to treat the slaves they had rescued. Neela has been passionate in expressing her frustration. And she'd had reason. Fine points, as well. At least Mord had been discrete, well, discrete-ish. They had started to worry when he'd taken so long. The way Alil fawned over him afterwards was blatant enough. Jonas and Benne, on the other hand...
He sighed and tried to release his thoughts. The voice of Justice came when the mind was still. He focused on the sounds and the smells around him, counting his breaths.
The jungle had not smelled good before. And the sludge that had fallen from that monstrosity certainly made it worse. That smell clung to Jonas and Benne after they had got a little close to the dripping sludge in their little nook when they crept off to make love. It smelled medicinal and inky.
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| Troglodyte From the Dungeons & Dragons 5e Monster Manual; ©2014 Wizards of the Coast |
Tarrant stretched and coiled his tentacle around the hilt of his sword. As much as he loathed his magic-warped appendage, it certainly made some things easier... Like gripping his Rapier without appearing to move. He waited as the thing crept slowly closer, tensing and relaxing his legs.
When the creature was almost upon him he sprung up, slinging his belt and scabbard across the room. His blade flashed orange in the ember light. It struck the crumbling stone wall next to the creature's head, causing it to stagger back and turn a bright Crimson.
"Up and to arms!" he cried "We are under attack! "
His steel clashed with the monster's bone-and-obsidian weapon. He was fierce, but the creature's smell grew worse, cloying... He tried to hold vomit down as he fought. The sounds of his allies rising and fumbling for weapons kept him hopeful despite increasing physical distress. He ducked as the macuahuitl shattered a stone over his head. He slashed at its belly but cut only air as the creature kept back with inhuman speed only to come back with swings that caused the wind to howl through its weapon.
And then the world spun as he accidentally stepped on stone fragments. His back hit the floor and he saw motion overhead, then there was a spray of blood that splashed his face and a wet thud. As he got his bearings, he saw Mord sliding Scarlett back into her scabbard as the stinking monster hit the floor in two pieces.
Holden helped him to his feet as Jonas lit a torch.
"Where did it come from?"
Tarrant spat bile before it spoke. "I saw it come from that chamber."
Behind the Screen: After I resolved the wandering monster encounter with the Ape-men, I decided to ask the oracle if there was anything dangerous in the dungeon. "Yes and..." So I decided there was a small dungeon under there, and rolled for a random Level 1 dungeon encounter... A single Troglodyte., mercifully.
Mord took the lead. They had decided not to use this room, as there were holes in the ceiling and walls. Following his nose and greasy smears on the vegetation he found a hole in the ground his fellows had missed as he'd dallied with Alil. A staircase descended into the earth.
Neela crept ahead and listened, her nostrils flared.
"There's definitely more of them down there."
"What do we do?" Jonas looked out at the choking blackness of the desert.
"Easy," Mord said. " We close the door." He called Holden to help him and asked Neela for the mallet, crowbar, and hammer she'd taken from Golmore's Hoard. It took him surprisingly little time to collapse a section of Wall and send it tumbling into the hole.
Most of the party struggled to get back to sleep, all the same.
Good stuff, hoss! I'm enjoying the story unfold.
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