Fear & Hunger: Singing Sand - Playtest Part 2

 

The car was equipped with big sand tires and glided over the dunes, down the wadis and up again. The Financier drove the group North past the excavation pit, up the valley to the explosive storage tent marked on the map in the foreman's office. They passed the weird looking vagrant they spotted earlier, who yelled incomprehensibly at them as they sped by.

 

The explosive storage area was an earth dugout lined with sandbags. There was a single dead man outside, brains blown out and acacia flowers growing from the wound. Most of the dynamite in the pit proved to be useless, the nitroglycerin inside had "sweated" outside the sticks and would explode if handled. The Technician was able to salvage a few sticks that could be carried safely, and distributed them to the team. With the bombs in hand, they got in the car and drove back to the pit.

 

Or tried to.

 

The first indication they were being pursued was a rumbling sound, which resolved into a car engine even louder than their own. It came skating across the dunes, faster than the touring car. A metal fusion of man and machine, a living racecar with a hood ornament face, peeled back in a permanent sneer. The charms and baubles streaming behind the sloped prow were unmistakably the ones worn by the Trucker who ferried the group to the valley.

The mechanical Nomad sped up and rear ended the touring car, sending it fishtailing across the dunes. The adventurers tossed dynamite and firebombs at it, managing to damage one of its wheels. It gained on them again and came dangerously close to totaling their car. The situation called for some fancy driving, and when the strange vagrant from earlier emerged from a sandy defile up ahead to shout at them, the Financier knew exactly what to do. He gunned the engine and made straight for the weird bald man, who jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being splattered. Right into the path of the living machine, which hit him at an angle and flipped. The futurist racecar landed upside down, revving its engine and spinning its wheels helplessly. The touring car sped away. The adventurers watched behind them as vermin emerged from the desert around the lifeless body of the vagrant, spiders and bugs and lizards swarming over the flipped Nomad.

 

The explorers parked the car in the utility tent outside the main dig. The pit was twenty feet deep, with ladders and a big ramp cut into the side allowing them to reach the bottom. Electrical cables snaked down from the wrecked generator into a door in the white stone facade of the tomb. The adventurers paused to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol they had recovered from around the camp, steeling themselves for a journey into the tomb. They hoped whatever lay inside would help them escape the cold green gaze of the moon.

 

 

This first level of the tomb had already been unsealed by the archaeologists from the Sun Temple. The murals in the entry chamber were faded beyond legibility, and the rest of the art had already been removed by the excavators, leaving only a black basalt statue of the Immortal Ego himself, Djoser Parahu Daoud. The group scavenged a couple cigarettes and went to the next room. They found the expedition leader, the Sun Priest Na'Od, praying to Rher and drawing pictures of the moon on the wall over the legless corpse of another archaeologist. He threatened the adventurers with instant death if they came any closer, fearing they were going to kill him. The explorers convinced him they weren't interested in killing him, only reaching the bottom level of the tomb and using the power of the Immortal Ego to banish the Trickster Moon. He warned them not to touch his ritual circles, and let them pass.

The beehive shaped chamber beyond was scribed with three ritual circles: one to Sylvian, Goddess of Love, one to Gro Goroth the Destroyer, and one scribed with the geometrically perfect insignia of the Ascended Gods. Three of the explorers were content to ignore the ritual circles. Not the Financier. He had an ulterior motive for coming to the tomb of Daoud, a place where the power of the Old and New Gods still lingered. He wanted his long-ruined leg healed. The Virgin Mage and Dark Priest told him if he was serious, he'd have to masturbate on the circle of the Goddess. The Financier dropped his pants and got a handle on his junk. Na'Od stormed into the room and began shaking his chac chac, the ritual rattle that boosted his magic power. The well-armed adventurers shot his shaking hand, then the Technician drilled him to death with the jackhammer before he could get a spell off.

The Financier masturbated furiously while the more magically inclined party members examined the Gro Goroth circle. The Dark Priest bled himself and learned the spell Hurting, letting him sever limbs with magic. Virgin Mage bled herself and learned the ritual Black Orb, letting her deal massive magic damage. The Financier's leg was healed, and the Goddess taught him the ritual Healing Whispers, letting him spend his sanity for healing magic. The group couldn't decide whether to inscribe the symbol of Fear & Hunger or Alll Mer on the circle of the Ascended Gods, and went down the stairs to the next level of the tomb

Rher descended on the Valley of the Gods when the dig team opened the second level of the tomb, preventing the archaeologists from fully exploring and removing its contents. The first room had a high ceiling and decorated walls. On one wall, an enormous moon sneered down at a landscape full of people, all fighting and killing each other until only one remained. On the other wall, a tall man with horns rebuked the moon, sending it fleeing back into space. The team interpreted this as the power of the Immortal Ego to end the Sacred Termina Festival and banish the Moon God back to space. They also found a shotgun and some beer where the excavators abandoned it.

 

The next room was large, held up by a series of columns. Something scraped in the dark, rusty metal grinding against stone. They shined their lights into the dark gallery. A Penance Knight marched into the beam, a legendary warrior from ancient Vatican City, sealed inside a suit of armor and sent on a suicide mission a thousand years ago. The Technician freaked out and fired at the zombie knight, missing completely. He ran off into the dungeon. The Virgin mage threw a molotov and set the monster on fire, then hit it with a black orb. The Dark Priest shook the chac chac and blasted its arm off with hurting, killing it.

 

Fleeing into the tunnels, the Technician killed his headlamp to avoid being spotted by more monsters. He was stymied by a glowing magic barrier, in front of which an enormous beetle was crouched. The insect turned around and he saw it had a human face - that of the Sun Priest he met on the truck coming in.

 

The beetle-man scuttled past the Technician and toward the lights of the other adventurers in the gallery, as they looted the remains of the knight. The bug Bettlebrow told them he had figured out the answer to the age old riddle. They didn't have to choose between the Old and New Gods anymore. He opened his arms to embrace them. They swung their weapons, but couldn't penetrate his chitinous hide. He crushed the Dark Priest in a hug, breaking several bones in the process. The Financier killed the beetle with a shotgun blast to the human-face before it could deal any more damage. The Technician used a stick of dynamite to blow up the magical seal, unblocking the entrance to the third floor of the dungeon. He fled into the unknown depths below before the others could catch up with him.

 

The third level was a series of limestone caves, through which the builders of the tomb had made a passage. Mineral buildup from dripping water had occluded the path, and the Technician got lost wandering in the dark tunnels. He realized he was being followed when he heard the hooting sound, like wind whistling through cracks in stone. A tribe of fossil apes was following him, ancient proto-humans reanimated by the magic leaking out of Daoud's tomb. The half-men were clearly psyching themselves up to attack, and he chambered the last round in the rifle, wondering if he should save it for himself.

 

The party caught up with him right before the apes pounced. Outnumbered, the prehistoric fossils fell back. The Technician brandished the rifle at the other explorers, warning them to stay back. The Mage and the Priest calmed him down and gave him their last beer. Fortified against the horrors of the underworld, they proceeded on, and found the way out of the caves, leading to a bridge over a vast pit. Opalescent fossils glimmered in the pit below the causeway to the inner sanctum.

The final chamber was shaped like a pyramid. In the center was a stone sarcophagus of black stone. Leaking out of the coffin was a trickle of black slime. Licking up the slime were a pair of ghouls, facial features obscured by a thick layer of ichor.

The Technician vomited. The ghouls scuttled over to lick it up, leaving the coffin unattended.

It took all four adventurers to lever the lid off, then it came free like it weighed nothing. Inside was the Power of the Self. The Immortal Ego. The Father of Songhai. A New God of conquest and slavery and great works and monumental architecture. With his emergence from the box, the Trickster Moon Rher was banished back to the furthest realms. Like a headache the contestants didn't know they had, suddenly vanishing.

The Immortal Ego was a seven foot tall Abyssonian man with the horns of an antelope and pointed beard like an iron spike. He was happy to wake up after so long asleep, in a time where the power of the Old Gods was weak. He offered the contestants fabulous rewards if they knelt and called him master, and death if they refused.

• The Dark Priest would lead Daoud’s inquisitors and root out the corruption at the heart of the Vatican.
• The Financier would lead the Immortal Ego’s expeditions to all the hidden places of the world and receive the recognition he deserved.
• The Technician would lead Daoud’s legions against the powers of the old world, saving Songhai from domination by other nations and peoples.
• The Virgin Mage would live in safety and comfort for the rest of her life as an exalted high priestess of her order.

The Virgin Mage agreed immediately. The Dark Priest refused - he already had a god and his name was Alll Mer. The Technician agreed, then reached for the dynamite stuffed under his coveralls. Daoud didn't understand what he was doing, because he hadn't been outside the tomb since the Bronze Age. The Virgin Mage and the Financier did. The Financier got the hell out of the room. The Virgin Mage hit the Technician with a black orb, hoping to finish him off before he blew up her meal ticket. The orb didn't kill the Technician. He set off the dynamite, blowing up the Virgin Mage, the Dark Priest and the Immortal Ego Djoser Parahu Daoud.

 

The Financier made it out of the dungeon in one piece. He healed his ruined leg and all it cost was the lives of the entire dig team.

All except one.

In the ruins of the inner sanctum, the power of Alll Mer resurrected the Dark Priest, denying him the martyrdom he craved. The room was partially collapsed and the Immortal Ego was splattered all over the wall by the explosion. The Priest scraped a goodly portion off the stone and stuffed it into the container he used to carry consecrated hosts, for transport back to Vatican City. Mission accomplished, he made for the surface as well. He climbed out of the pit just in time to see the Financier drive away.