Content Notice: Blood & Gore, Death, Desecrated Bodies, Monsters that Eat Human Flesh, Implied Torture; R-Rated in the vein of a slasher flick.
Neela went first, keeping low with her lantern shuttered until it provided only enough light to see where she put her feet. The path was wide and ragged. The roof of the cave disappeared into the gloom. The only sounds the scuffing of her allies behind her, and the wet death-rattle that became from the cage each time the breeze picked up.
When the walls opened up to her sides it was into a black void.
Turns 1-2
The damp and f breath of the cave plastered her hair to her face. She took a deep, slow breath, and then decided to risk opening her lantern.
Little by little the entrance chamber to the cave resolved itself. The walls were of marbled purple and green stone, and places encrusted with salt and rust from the dull blocks of iron that occasionally jutted from the surface.
In places, low heaps of guano sat between decapitated stalagmites, bearing bloated black mushrooms. A glimpse upwards revealed colonies of eyeless white bats with serpentine tails
As more of the cave revealed itself, Neela could make out a stone alcove carved with obscene images she chose not to let her eyes linger on. They reminded her of artwork from Golmore's spell book perhaps a little too well.
She could feel her allies had stopped just a couple of arm's lengths behind her she gestured for them to wait.
She opened the lantern a little further. She could see the walls now of this auditorium-sized chamber. And passages ahead and off to the right. She could see paths to both where the guano had been cleared.
And then the I human screaming began. The all too familiar mult-itonal howl of a shrieker split the air. She's spig a curse and drew her new baelsard, making room so that her allies could form up around her. In seconds there was a shield wall, the massive back of Mord, a comfort in front of her. Jonas braced with a gravity rod to her side. It felt good to have that weapon still on hand.
The group crouched and ready, flicking eyes back and forth between the two passages. Mord took a moment to aim his crossbow and silenced the Shrieked with an expert shot.
One minute... Two... Anfrald let out a nervous laugh. Neela put her hand. His shoulder to silence him and strained her ears.
"We have movement from both directions... Right is closer."
Even as she spoke a shape emerged from the gloom of the right hand passage. They saw the claws first as climbed slowly and methodically from stalagmite to stalagmite. The stench that came with it was cloying and dense. A long, been scaly body ending a a spine-crowned reptilian head.
The creature paused for a moment, slitted nostrils flaring. And then a third eye split open on the middle of its forehead, and diamond of amber with cross shapes with cross-shaped pupil. Then it lurched forward bearing dagger teeth .
It's first movements have been slow and languid, it's sudden violent motion caused the front rank to flinch. It crashed into them, shattering Anfrald's shield, and ripping off most of his forearm in the first bite, then bore him to the ground with a clawed foreleg that punctured his throat. The other foreleg tore into Mord's leg, opening several bloody gashes.
Scarlett rose and fell, hacking into the creature's shoulder forcing it to stagger. Tarrant's rapier bit the monster's chest, but deflect off it's heavy ribs
Holden gazed at the creature, still, emotionless. An island on a sea of swords and shouts. He could sense the reptile's quantum position. Feel how it might be best broken. Then he held out and reached with the cold empty feelings he'd been struggling with since he fell into the portal.
His flesh split. The sickly mango smell came with a cloud of fucsia vapor as slick black tentacles burst from his skin. They were new, strange, but he had near perfect control over them, as if he had been born with them. He slashed out and cracked the creature across the back with a tentacle, breaking stone under its weight. The second had to stop dead above the creature's skull as Aeged broke ranks, nearly getting himself brained. He pushed through the group, cursing and spitting as he fled for daylight.
An arrow sunk into the creature's back as Neela broke left to get a clear shot at the reptile's back. The Ehlhbun was on the it, throwing an arm around its neck and slashing with the blade.
"Hold it!" Jonas screamed as he lunged with the gravity rod, droving it at the great third eye. Tissue tore and a whirlpool of vitreous humor swirled around the tip of the alien implement as Jonas forced it in. The creature thrashed for a moment and then was still.
There was no time to catch their breath, strange howls came from the tunnel ahead. They pulled themselves back into formation, kicking the giant tuatara into position to serve as a rough barrier.
"Quite a strange development, Holden," Tarrant observed as they closed ranks.
"You should talk."
"I am not passing judgment. Neither of us chose to have such... appendages."
"Then what?"
"Only this... Do you still speak with your Goddess? I have not observed you at prayer."
"I no longer receive Benedetti's hand."
"Then your goddess has abandoned you?"
"Fate never abandons a man," Holden gazed with his night-sky eyes into the dark where he could already see movement in the gloom. "We are all hers in the end. I am still doing as she appointed. I just did not know she would be so cruel."
Then two shapes lumbered into the light.
These Ape-men were not the same as the brutes that they had fought in the jungle. Their hair had turned to silver. Even as they stooped, Mord only came up to their chest. They wore chains of skulls and mummified limbs around their necks and loins. Horrid markings painted across their chests and along the backs of their barbed tentacles.
"Perhaps we should have asked for some details about these ape men?" Neela asked as she drew back her bowstring. Mord's crossbow clacked first, and the lead brutes tentacles cracked like a whip as it caught the bolt, it's mouth spread into a wicked leer. Then Neel's arrow drove itself into the creature's forehead, cracking its skull. Jonas' sling stone made a hollow thud off the beasts chest.
Then Holden's tentacles snaked overhead, gripping one of the beasts free tentacles and coiling around its throat.
As the creature struggled, Ehlhbun charged to slash at its groin. She slipped on lizard blood and fell at the ape's feet. The knight errant struggled for footing as the enraged Ape-man's arms lashed out and wrapped around her chest. The beast picked her up like an oversized doll and squeezed as it howled in rage. The sound of her rib-cage collapsing thundered through the caves. The beast swung her against a stalagmite and threw her limp body to one side before grabbing hold of Holden's tentacles to pull itself free.
The second Ape-man charged past to struggling companion and lashed out with arms and tentacles, pulping the giant lizards carcass under it's feet. The flows fell on Tarrant, cracking his shield and denting his helmet.
Lava howled and grabbed Anfrald's spear, joining in the Assault. Mila drew a dagger and threw herself forward, too.
Chanting from the back ranks Jonas finished a spell. The beast hammering on Tarrant's face grew slack and it crashed to the ground, unconscious. Mord, Neela, and Tarrant surged on the beast as it wrestled with Holden's tentacles, slashing at it's legs and groin. Mila's dagger found soft tissue from behind its skirt of bones, causing a sudden torrent of blood and fluid. The beast went slack, dropping to its knees. Holden took advantage to squeeze and shatter bones before dropping the creature to the ground.
Mord was swift to leap on the unconscious one and hack its head free from its body.
Tarrant dropped to a knee to pray for strength, and the others checked on the hirelings, living and dead.
Lava was shaking. Neela put an arm around her.
"You were very brave. We only expected you to carry the torch. Thank you."
"I- I'm sorry. I can't." Lava pulled herself to her feet. "Neela, you've been kind, but I can't do this."
"We understand," She said as they both watched Jonas drag, Ehlhbun's broken body to a safe, clean spot near the entrance, to go with what was left of Anfrald's. "Go. See if you can catch up with Aeged. Take the spear."
Lava handed the lantern over to Neela, and leaned heavily on the Spear, head low as she walked out of the cavern. Without a word, Mila followed her.
"It would appear we are on our own again."
Behind the Screen: The events of this battle demanded morale checks at the beginning and end. Aeged failed early, while Lava failed at the end. Honestly, Mila stuck with the party according to the dice, I just plain forgot about her after every other hireling died or fled. So I am writing her departure in here.
The group fanned out, searching likely places for stashed objects as Tarrant softly murmured the last rites over the two men-at-arms. A low whistle from Jonas led them to the strange altar on the Western edge of the cavern.
A loose stone pulled aside on the Altar's surface, he held a circlet of gold, a platinum medallion, and ring, all matching, and glittering with gems, all of them pulled from a pile of bones and soiled blue silk crumbled in a shallow pit beneath.
"Are those...?" Tarrant held the jewelry up to Neela s she opened their lamp.
"Yes, but they aren't the real value of these jewels. I know them from my days as a Lapidary... Gods, has it only been a few months?" She shook her head, then weighted the amulet in her hand. "These are the raiment of the Queen of Cordova. The one who disappeared twenty years ago."
"Are you sure?"
"When I was a little girl, when Queen Zyr disappeared, men came to every Lapidary and jeweler in every port on the Cold Sea with drawings of the jewels and stones, in case someone might try to sell them. The reward for information on the missing queen was a small fortune itself."
"This must be her," Mord fished the bones out of the pit.
"Sacrificed to one of the old ones. How do you suppose she came to be here?"
Mord bundled the bones up carefully and tucked them in his pack.
"Hardly matters. These could easily buy us a tower on the mainland. And the king a' Cordova might pay handsome' to know what happened to his mother."
Behind the Screen: Crowns, medallions and rings of platinum covered in diamonds was a surprising trove to find, even in a Level-4 Dungeon. I made up the story of the lost queen to explain finding over 30,000gp of treasure in the first room of the dungeon. Perhaps it will become an important plot point later.
Turns 3-4
The company pressed on, climbing down the reeking gullet of the northern passage. In time it opened up into another large passage. Here the bats - and the guano - were mostly absent. Patches of luminous fungus showed them strange silhouettes that froze them in their tracks for a moment before Neela had the courage to open her lantern up and reveal far worse things than any had imagined.
Hanging spheres of human bones, dangling from barbed chains. Each with an opening and lined with skins. Skulls set in silent screams above the aperture of each. The silvery hair within showed them to be the beds of the Ape men. Eight, all told.
Old barrels, hanging sacks, and piles of trash were tucked around the corners. They quickly and quietly began rifling through them, looking for anything of value. After a moment, Jonas found a few shining objects wrapped in hides behind a natural stone pillar. Gold, mostly, and a few stones. They gathered in the lantern light to examine the find.
Neels was going over the stones when a clatter took them by surprise. They peered up into the confused face of one of the ape-men, which been startled to find humans in its bedchamber. So much so that it dropped massive chitin bowls of meat it had been cradling in its arms.
Mord snapped up hard and took aim with his crossbow. the bolt clattered off in the dark some distance behind it. Neela's snap shot as she dropped the sack of treasure to the floor was more successful: her arrow punched through the creature's left ear causing it to catch it's warning howl in its throat in shock. Long enough for Holden's tentacles to rip free of his arms again and coil around the beast's throat and forearm. Tarrant hefted a Ehlhbun's spear, driving it into the creature's thigh.
Jonas ducked low arching his hand between his friends, completing a spell he'd only recently copied from Golmore's book. A spray of white sludge burst from his hands spreading and twisting into many tangled strands. Within moments the Ape-Man, and the area behind him as far as the lantern light could reach was filled with dense, foul-smelling webs of wrist-thick silk. The beast choked and struggled, but fut was unable to move or call for help. Holden squeezed its neck harder as sling bullet and arrows pelted it. Tarrant and Mord had spent part of the previous two days practicing a method of passing the bow so that Tarrant could reload it quickly and get it into Mord's hand, firing faster than one man could alone. As Mord caught his crossbow he aimed high and put it into the creature's eyesocket. It twitched for a moment, emptying its body of waste and then hung limply in the webbing.
"Three down, five to go."
They were interrupted by the sound of snarling and a human scream beyond the maze of web.
Behind the Screen: As I noted in my article about how I set up this dungeon: I kept the number of Ape-Men to the listed 8, and placed 6 in rooms that would be shuffled using dice around the map. The other 2 would have to be found by random encounter. Once all but the two in the Necronomicon Room were cleared, no further random encounters with Ape-Men would occur. The dice have certainly put them all in one place. Two in room 16, one in room 13, and a random encounter so far. That is half!
In The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence, Venger Satanis added a few more DCC-like elements to the play of the game, especially to do with magic. Every time a spell is cast, a d6 is rolled. on a 1 the spell fails and is consumed. On a 6 it is double in effect, duration, and damage. On a 3, it causes a chaotic wild magic effect. With a higher rate of failure, I decided to add that a result of 5 or 6 lets the caster keep the spell.
In this case I rolled a 6, and ruled that the extra volume of the web spell flooded into room 13, and filled over half the room's volume. I rolled to see if there was an encounter in there, and got yet another Ape-Man torturing a random NPC. Given how much of room 13 was filled I have the Ape-Man and victim a 4 in 6 chance of being caught. They were.
Hearing the screams, they moved forward as swiftly as they could through the web as it choked a narrow passage. On the far side they came upon the sight of two beings suspended in the web. One was another of the Ape-Men, the other a child-sized being in ragged clothes, who screamed with a grown man's voice.
"Oh thank the gods! Humans! Help me!"
The Ape-man thrashed harder, roaring and snarling. Strands strained and snapped as arrows and sling bullets pelted the creature. After a few minutes it tore free, screaming in rage and terror, and attempted to turn and run. A crossbow bolt from Mord punctured the back of its skull, sending it sprawling into the web again and leaving its carcass suspended in a comical pose.
Jonas murmured a brief counter-incantation, and the web disintegrated dropping the little creature - and the great carcass to the floor.
Turn 5
"Much obliged," The little man said as he pulled himself stiffly from the floor. A Halfling - Llalor, if you wanted to be polite - with big ears and huge brown eyes limped towards them. "I was not sure that God's-be-damned brute was going to be satisfied until I was good and broken."
"It would leave no man to these beasts' mercy" Tarrant replied, kneeling down to meet the Llalor at his own height. "How came you here, friend?"
"Gery Hardbottle, at your service, Sir Crow. I'd head rumors of a magical object here that can show you secet places. I'd managed to sneak past the brutes in the sleep chamber, and a fair bit deeper into the cave, till I ran across a patch of screaming mushrooms. That's how this beast caught me. To my eternal lament."
"You recognize my emblem?"
"Aye, Your watch-hunter friends have done me and mine a fair turn or two."
The little Halfling busied himself collecting a backpack and it's scattered contents from a nearby nook.
"Then perhaps you can help us. We are here looking for a book."
"Wish I could help you there, friend. That way the passage goes into their little butchery. Two tunnels beyond it go to their mushroom farm. That where I tripped over those damned shriekers. The passage on the right hand from there, the stone is worked and covered in inscriptions what made no sense to me. The passage on the right hand from there you'll find a room full of bone art, which is also reachable from that tunnel, yonder. Beyond that loop I've made it no further in... And before you ask, I've no care to see any of it again." The Halfling lit a candle from his pack. "I'll be a week afore I can walk without pain.
"Gods bless you and your order."
Most were still too busy processing his barrage of words to try to stop as he made a bow and limped back the way they came.
They searched the room for a few minutes in stunned silence and the sat together to catch their breath.
Turn 6
They did not get to enjoy more than a moment's peace; Jonas had only begun believing himself against stalagmite, Neela was opening a water skin, and Tarrant and Holden breaking out some rations when another of the Ape-Men lumbered in with a net full of gigantic crabs.
It howled at the sight of its brother's carcass and surged towards the party. Arrows sailed past it as it readied a strike. A net of webs srung up before it as Jonas shouted a spell hurriedly, only to have it falter and the beast rip right through. Holden's tentacles caught it just as it lunged at Neela, the two roared at each other as tentacles thrashed and twined. The creature's head disappeared under a knot of black limbs, then there was a sudden muffled crunch before it toppled, headless, to the ground.
Behind the Screen: I modeled Holden's Voidwarped class on a number of weird powers and effects described in Venger Satanis' work and elsewhere. His tentacle attacks are literally cribbed from the very "Tentacled Ape-men" the party encountered here and on their way to town. Complete with instant decapitation on a d20. It costs Holden hit points to activate the power each day and comes with the risk of crippling mutations.
I was pretty worried about this encounter when I rolled it. So far I am 3/3 for random encounter rolls and my PCs are now suffering penalties from fatigue as they need rest.
Jonas had a spell failure here, and so the part's greatest weapon, his Web spell has been lost. They are out of healing, too. It is starting to look pretty bleak.
"Five" Holden said as he shook bits of Ape-man skull from his limbs.
Turn 7
Somehow they all returned to their rations, but remained quiet and unsettled. Each wondering what had become of the cheerful pilgrim they had known a few days ago. None more troubled by the question than Holden himself. They resolved to check the loop Gery had spoken of, at least, before retreating for a moment.
Turn 8
The "Butchery" turned out be a Stinking cavern of curing meat hanging from chains. Neela and Jonas took a moment to support each other as they vomited at the sight of several dismembered human torsos hanging over a cauldron. Ceremonial markings painted across their chests.
At the center of the chamber a butcher's block made of the shell of a crab larger than a banquet table was decorated with rusted and notched axes and swords from those that came before, rusted, pitted, and caked with gore.
A single kriegsmesser stood out as still in good repair. As Mord pulled it out of the chitin he could feel a whisper in his mind. It, too, was a thinking sword. He wrapped it up in his old cloak and added it to his pack.
They gave Tarrant time to perform a quick prayer for the Dead but none wanted to spend another moment in that chamber.
Turn 9
The next chamber smelled musty, and the floor was filled with mushrooms. Heeding Gery's warning, they spied out a patch of Shriekers at the edge of their dim light and battered them with missiles in a concentrated volley.
Jonas was more interested in the carvings on the Southern wall: rings of strange inscriptions around a series of stone hands held in different Occult mudras. Alchemical runes and astrological runes in cartouches above and below?
"What does it mean?" Neela asked him.
"It is a magical spell. One the Cult here valued." He tested the hand signs with his own intact hand. "I- I shoukd like to come back here with different magics prepared and study it."
Holden gazed to a large tunnel set in the far wall. "There is a disturbance to time and space that way," he nodded. "We have much to do here."
All were interrupted by a flurry of motion from the corner of their eyes.
Turn 10
When Neela opened her lantern to full-bright, it exposed a woman skulking in the darkness nearby: she winced in the light.
Naked, her body was covered in grime, and in places covered in ritual markings like those they saw on the bodies dangling in the Butchery. Her lower body sported dark bruises and pale sucker marked. She winced in the light her green eyes shone fever bright.
She brandished a bloody human femur.
"Stay back! All of you!"
"It's all right," Neela soothed. "We aren't going to hurt you."
"How do I know you're not one of them?" The woman asked
"One of who?"
"The bastards down here who are serving the monsters. Don't play dumb."
"There are people down here working with those things? No, we are not with them. We were sent here to rob the Ape-men."
"The hell you are. " she said. She gazed at Holden and Tarrant, flinching at the sight of their tentacles.
"Please. Wait." Neela pled. "Are there more prisoners?"
The woman feinted with the bone club, causing Neela to take a step back, and then bolted hard for the passage to the butchery.
"Let her go," Tarrant told the others before they gave chase. "She'll see the evidence of what's happened for herself, and she has a safe way out. If she's smart she'll arm herself with Ehlhbun's armor and something from the butcher's block. We left her path to escape. Let her. We will likely see her again at Broken Cliff.
"Do you suppose there are more people in here?" Neela asked.
"If there are, we will free them. And we will bring Khorus's wrath down on the heads of any who would dare participate in this... depravity."
Behind the Screen: So far, I've made five Wandering monster rolls and got a 1 on the 1d6 four times. At this point I was glad it wasn't the last wandering Ape-man. I'm not sure they could take it. To this point I have had unlucky (Anfrald was chosen at random by the Tuatara, and Ehlhbun rolled a Nat. 1 in close combat, which I decided gave the Ape-man.
I have focused heavily on tactics that stop enemies from getting attacks, but Jonas is out of tricks. Going toe-to-toe with one of these brutes would be bad news.i was relieved when I rolled "escaping prisoner." Sadly, Tanfleue the Fighter rolled very poorly on NPC reaction as was not willing to stop and chat. I will note her as an NPC in Broken Cliff for future events.
Turns 11--13
The chamber beyond was far too massive to see in the lantern light, even as they eased it open. The more light they created, the less they liked the look of the area.
As far as the light would shine the aea was filled with totems of bone and cured sinew, human, animal, and monstrous bones jumbled into crude, hateful fetishes.
"If Gery pointed us aright," Mord nodded his head. "The Caves'll loop back that ways. I'm thinkin' we do the course, and then slip out. Get ourselves a drink, and buy some more arrows. Then we come back t'morrow to kill the rest."
The idea gnawed at some, but no one could deny they were tired. It was a weary, running battle.
"Three more to go, Jonas" Neela said to the sorcerer. "Can you keep them off balance?"
"Not really. No. I've no more web in me, nor the power to put things to sleep. I didn't expect to press my powers so hard so fast. The Islands are fighting me."
"Then we loop back and come at it fresh. We've killed five of them. The others will be expecting us... But they no longer have the numbers. No doubt they will try and ambush us on our return. Let's be expecting one." Tarrant set the twisted monuments to his memory. This place would be purged.
"I don't trust this place," Neela said after a pause. "Let me go ahead and look for tripwire and the like. It would be easy to hide something nasty in these. Especially now that we know there are humans down here."
She lowered her lantern light and crept ahead, checking a path to one of the several passages leading out of the cave that seemed like it was most likely to take them back. Satisfied that she saw no traps, she returned to her allies.
Quietly they moved through the silent, haunting fetishes. Eventually, they needed to stop and hide among them to take another breather and drink some water. All were glad to see the end of that chamber.
Behind the Screen: There actually is a scything blade trap in here. Neela missed it. I honored the original BECMI rule that each character has a 2 in 6 chance of triggering a trap when passing it. The whole party missed it, even though their route took them right past the randomly determined trap position. This might come back to bite them in their asses later.
Turn 14-18
"The Council of Geoffrey Looted This Room" was scrawled on an old, dilapidated wooden cabinet tucked in a corner of a mostly-empty cave among a few piles of reduse and the chitin of oversized crabs. Neela examined it only briefly before signalling the group to move on through the winding purple-black chambers. Eventually, they came upon the carcass of the Ape-man they had shot to death while protecting Gery, and the one whose head Holden had crushed. They were already beginning to putrefy, melting into a greenish pool of corruption.
Beyond them the same was true of the one they had surprised in the bedchamber. They rested at the far end of that chamber from the carcasses, taking a moment to ready themselves for the push.
Behind the Screen: The dice seemed to agree with me that the party had enough excitement. I finally caught a break from random encounters.
Turns 19-22
As they expected, Ehlhbun had been stripped of much of her gear. "I'm Sorry - Tanfleure" was left scrawled on the wall in grime. Whether she meant it for the party or Ehlhbun, none was sure.
They hoisted the bodies onto Mord and Tarrant's back for the mercifully short hike back along the shore to broken cliff.
Tarrant was slow to rejoin them in the Blue Gator/ He'd chosen to take on the task of informing the next-of-kin of the hirelings that hadn't made it. Mila and Lava were found drinking in the inn themselves, and muttered apologies, feeling too awkward to join the party they'd abandoned to toast the dead.
Beyond the toast to the fallen, they said little aside from muttered plans for the next foray. How they would prepare the Assault and be ready for the ambush over a Map Jonas had studiously drawn as they went.
Jonas and Mord at least had waiting companions to bed down with for the night to take the chill off. Tarrant stayed up well into the night in his cups talking to his god, trying to sort out what he had seen. When the green-eyed woman from the cave stepped Int the inn later that evening and noticed him, there was a moment of pause. He graciously decided to pretend not to recognize her.
Some of us have suffered enough, he thought, without being shamed for our lapses.
Compassion for tonight. Tomorrow would be a day for righteous fury.
Keep it going, hoss! That's good stuff. ;)
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