Fear & Hunger: Singing Sand - Playtest Part 1

 

Abyssonia, birthplace of civilization, 1913. The nation of Songhai is wracked by tensions between the Deeds Of The Fathers and the Control Faction. The Deeds Of The Fathers believe in isolationism, ancestor worship, collaborative decision making (between adult males) and banning the worship of the Old Gods. The Control Faction believes in international trade, freedom of religion, a strong military, and a form of modernizing authoritarianism based on enlightenment principles rather than the worship of deified heroes. 

These tensions only got worse with the discovery of the fabled tomb of Djoser Parahu Daoud in the Valley of the Gods. The tomb’s discovery ignited a firestorm of controversy, with factions arguing it should be turned into a pilgrimage site, excavated by archaeologists to learn more about the heroes of ancient Songhai, or left undisturbed out of respect to the legendary king. A compromise was reached when the site was turned over to the scholars of the Temple of Amon, universally respected seekers of truth and balance.

 

In their search for knowledge, the sages of the Temple immediately re-ignited the debate by inviting experts from across Abyssonia, Europa and the East to help excavate the ruins of the temple. That’s you. Whatever your personal reasons are, you’re on your way to the Valley of the Gods. Some of you are coming from farther away than others, but the trip is hard on everyone due to the isolation of the desert site, far from the lush forests and river deltas of Songhai’s more populated regions. The last leg of the journey is aboard a military truck, driven by a soldier and carrying supplies for the dig. There’s a nasty sandstorm on the horizon, but once you get into the valley you should be safe.

The dust storm is so thick that the driver can barely see the road. If it weren’t for the canvas siding on the truck bed you’d be skinned alive by the blasting sand. It’s so loud you can’t hear anything except the blood hammering the walls of your own skull. The ride is so bumpy you’re worried your bones will shatter and your organs will liquify. 

 

Then it stops. The ride down the hill is smooth and you can hear yourself think over the ringing in your ears. Then the truck makes an unhappy grinding sound and stops, mechanical components filled with sand.

You hop out of the vehicle. The driver and the soldier are already fussing over the engine. You’re standing at the floor of a valley, filled with rocks, sand and dust. Ahead of you are the various elements of the archaeological dig, spread out across the floor of the graben, bounded by the rock walls of the sink. Above you, the air is clear, you’re in the eye of the sandstorm. The moon is larger than it has any right to be, it sneers down at you pitilessly.

There was supposed to be someone to meet you here.

In the truck: nine visitors to the dig site.

• The Commissar, an Abyssonian Deeds of the Fathers party official, who came to ensure the excavation treated the tomb of a revered ancestor with respect.
• The Dark Priest, an Abyssonian from Vatican City, who came to the land of his birth for the first time since childhood to help with the excavation of an ancient religious site.
  
• The Financier, the moneyman and former gentleman adventurer from Rondon who bankrolled the dig, checking on his investment.
  
• The Soldier, an Abyssonian corporal who hated foreigners but took hospitality seriously, protecting the expedition from raids by desert nomads and rebels.
  
• The Student, an Abyssonian archaeology major from the city, who came to finally do some fieldwork on an important dig.
  
• The Sun Priest, an Abyssonian religious scholar from the Temple of Amon, who came to help his coreligionists excavate the site.
  
• The Technician, an Abyssonian graduate of the technical college, who came to run the drills, generators and other machines necessary for opening the tomb.
  
• The Trucker, an Abyssonian desert nomad with a knack for machines, who ferried the rest of the group across the desert to the dig site.
  
• The Virgin Mage, a priestess from the Eastern Sanctuaries, sent out into the secular world to study ancient sigils found at the excavation.
  

The Virgin Mage, Sun Priest, Student, Financier and Dark Priest all headed for the archaeologists' camp to look for answers. The Technician estimated it would take four hours to fix the truck, and went to the excavators' camp with the Commissar to look for parts or another vehicle. The Trucker and Soldier stayed with the disabled vehicle.

The archaeology camp was deserted. The Financier checked the personal tents of the expedition members, looking for the leader who was supposed to meet him. The Virgin Mage and Dark Priest checked the artifact tent, and found a bunch of grave goods removed from the dig site for study. The Mage pocketed a lucky coin and donned a shirt of bronze chainmail, which puzzled the two Priests since they hadn't seen anything that would merit body armor yet.

Over at the excavator camp, the Technician played the role of the dumb mechanic while the Commissar explained the importance of ensuring ideological discipline among the excavators. These people were desert nomads and therefore unreliable. Case in point: the dormitory tent was empty, rugs and saddlebags tossed everywhere. The Technician went to check the medical tent and was dismayed to find the expedition's nurse dissecting the remains of the doctor. Her skin was peeled in a regular pattern like a living anatomical diagram. He went back and told the Commissar about the creepy flayed woman, and the Commissar ignored the warning. He wanted to find out what was going on, and she was going to tell him.

The party apparatchik entered the medical tent, gun at the ready. He immediately freaked out and shot the mutilated woman. She grinned and attacked him with her scalpel. He avoided vivisection and knifed her with his ceremonial dagger, and the Technician joined in with his wrench. They were able to kill her before she did to them what she did to the doctor.

The adventurers at the archaeology camp heard the gunshots. The Virgin Mage, Dark Priest and Financier set out across the valley floor to see what was going on. A filthy man shouted at them from the direction of the Dig Site itself. He had the trefoil of Rher carved on his forehead and the twin Ms of the God of Fear & Hunger on his belly. He told them they should all kill themselves, then ducked behind a boulder.

 

The adventurers arrived in time for the Commissar to storm out of the medical tent, clearly perturbed. The Virgin Mage examined the dead nurse but couldn't determine what was going on with her skin, or why she was trying to kill people. Surgical addiction? A paraphilia? A search of the medical tent turned up enough goodies to justify the trip.

The group debated what to do next. The Commissar yelled from outside. First in one voice, then two, then three, all superimposed over each other.

 

 

Something was wrong with him. His body was filled with smaller copies of himself, all shouting at once. The terrain of his mind projected onto physical reality. The moon cancer bestowed by the Master of Madness Rher. The adventurers opened fire, the Financier shooting his big revolver and the Technician his concealed carry pistol. The Virgin Mage and Dark Priest stepped in and finished the thing off with hand weapons before it could do anything crazy. They took the dead mutant's pistol and detachable shoulder stock. They were living on borrowed time, at risk of transformation into a monstrous creature if they didn't escape or find a solution to the monster moon glowering overhead.

 

They went back to the truck, to see how the repairs were coming. The Soldier was still there but the Trucker was gone. The corporal explained that the guy went to look for water since the radiator was overheated. They couldn't persuade him to provide any help, he didn't believe there were any monsters and wasn't going to leave the truck. They went to the archaeologist camp where the Trucker was supposed to have gone.

 

They thought the place was deserted until the "Student" came out from behind the artifact tent with a sack full of silver coins. She made a shushing gesture, pointed to the tent, then continued stealing treasure like she hadn't been caught. Inside the tent was a huge camel spider wearing the sash of a Sun Priest, halfway molted out of the human body dangling from its abdomen.

 

The Virgin Mage snuck inside and grabbed the bronze helmet that the Dark Priest didn't take the last time they visited, avoiding the patrolling solifuge. Meanwhile the Financier and Technician checked out the dining tent. That was occupied by a hyena-looking beast, wearing an apron and fussing over the stove. It laughed at the explorers and told them if they wanted to access the tent, they needed to bring it a tasty treat. Either that or it could kill and eat them. They decided to give it the corpse of Leviathan, the moonscorched form of the Commissar they dispatched earlier.

Before leaving, the team regrouped and checked the tent holding the archaeologists' personal vehicles. There was a pickup truck with a full tank of diesel fuel but no keys, and a touring car with the keys in the ignition but no gasoline (and it couldn't run on diesel). The team siphoned the diesel out of the pickup and took it with them, in search of either gasoline or keys to the truck.

Back at the excavators' camp, the gang checked the mess tent before retrieving the corpse of the Commissar. The bodies of the excavators were heaped inside, mutated and mutilated and dead by gunshot wounds and blades. A single surviving moonscorched desert dweller fired his carbine at the group and told them to get the fuck out. The food and water belonged to HIM. The Virgin Mage kept him talking while the Technician snuck around to the back and shot him through the wall of the tent. The Priest shot him, the Financier tackled him and the Virgin Mage killed him with the Nurse's scalpel. They took the short rifle off the dead excavator.

While the rest of the team fussed over their weapons, armor and fresh corpses, the Virgin Mage painted a warding sigil on her own face. They departed the excavator camp and took a corpse back to the archaeology camp to feed the beast. The alzabo came out to meet them halfway, and informed them that he had been evicted from the dining tent by another monster. He had a bullet hole in his apron. The hyena took the offered corpse and left the explorers in peace. They decided to investigate the pit rather than fighting whatever had scared the hyena-man off.

 

There were two tents at the dig site, which was a big pit in the earth leading down to the entrance of the tomb. The first was the foreman's tent, which had been thoroughly trashed. The explorers found notes with the location of the explosive storage tent, well away from the main camp. They also grabbed a couple excavation picks, which offered better armor penetration than their swords and knives. They went to the other side of the pit and investigated the utility tent next. The machines were smashed but the generator still had gasoline in the tank, enough to fill up the touring car.

There was a sound outside the tent. A drill, revving up.

A moonscorched Abyssonian man with a jackhammer fused to his arm burst through the wall of the tent and attacked.

The first volley of shots didn't take him down, and in a second he was on top of the Virgin Mage. Twice he tried to drill her face, and twice he was repulsed by the protective ward she painted on herself. That gave the rest of the group time to hack him apart and stomp him to death. The Mage and the Technician were able to extract the drill from his arm, and fuel it up with some of the gas. With no use for the diesel fuel they siphoned out of the pickup earlier, they made firebombs out of it. Nothing even attacked them when they went back to gas up the touring car at the archaeologists' camp.