Fear & Hunger: Singing Sand - Playtest Two 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 Dark Priest set off for the dig site, the Technician and Commissar went straight to the excavators' camp. The Student, Virgin Mage, Sun Priest and Financier went to the archaeologists' camp to meet with  the expedition leader.

The archaeology camp showed no signs of life, save the faint sound of laughter coming from the dining tent. The contestants checked the artifact tent and found a wealth of useful artifacts, including ancient armor which the Financier donned. The Student waited for the others to wander off, then began shoveling silver coins into bags for later retrieval. The Sun Priest went over to the dig site to find the Dark Priest. The big hole was similarly empty, it was only by shouting that the Sun Priest was able to locate his counterpart from the Vatican, who had already descended into the excavation pit twenty feet below. His shouts also attracted attention from the foreman of the excavation, a hulking Abyssonian desert nomad with his arm replaced by a jackhammer. Mister Driller took off running after the Sun Priest, who fled back toward the archaeology camp. 

 

The Sun Priest tripped and the Driller jabbed him with the jackhammer, boring clean through him but not hitting anything vital. The Financier and the Student shot the Driller with their handguns, and the Sun Priest finished his attacker off with a swipe of the crooked dagger he took from the artifact tent earlier.

The Virgin Mage examined the body. There was obviously something wrong with the dead excavator's physiology. His skin was hardened like an insect's cocoon, protecting the internal organs as they rearranged themselves into something strange and new. A filthy, naked man shouted at the contestants from a wadi, just out of pistol range. He had the broken trefoil of Rher scribed on his head, and the twin Ms of Fear & Hunger on his belly. He told them the Sacred Termina Festival was upon them, and they should all kill themselves. Or one of them could suck him off, and he'd tell them the location of a hidden treasure. The contestants told him to fuck off, and he disappeared behind a sand dune.

The contestants investigated the sounds of laughter from the dining tent. A hyena-looking beast fussed over the stove, laughing softly to itself. The Student waited in ambush outside the tent, pistol at the ready, while the others went in to parlay with the beast. It told them it would kill them unless they brought it a treat. The adventurers readied their weapons for a fight. The Student shot the talking hyena twice through the tent wall, and it ran away in fear - but not before the Virgin Mage could snatch the handgun stuffed in the waistbelt of its apron. There were other treasures in the dining tent. The remains of a poker game on the dining table yielded another pistol and a bottle of whiskey. The fridge held beer, still cold after the generator in the utility tent ran out of gas.

The contestants made a quick survey of the archaeologists' personal tents, finding a few useful items and a journal explaining what they already knew: they were trapped in the valley by the Trickster Moon Rher, who was transforming everyone into monsters and would transform them too if they didn't all kill each other. They decided against doing that, and checked the tent holding the archaeologists' personal vehicles. The touring car was out of gas, but the pickup was full of diesel and the Student was able to hotwire it. The gang piled in and drove to the excavator camp.

At the excavator camp, the Commissar paced the perimeter, talking to himself. He had already mutated, his voice was echoed by the hundreds of tiny copies of himself budding off his body. The Student wasn't in the mood for another mutant battle. He ran over the Leviathan with the pickup, then backed over his body to finish him off. The collision crushed the former-Commisar's handgun, but the wooden stock attached to it and bullets in the magazine were still good. Inside the dormitory tent, a grotesque molting camel-spider man in the livery of a Sun Priest argued with a moonscorched excavator over whose ancestors were stronger. The still sensate Sun Priest went in to dialogue with his coreligionist, and the spider man pounced on him. The contestants were bitten and stabbed by the pair of mutants, but managed to kill them with gunfire and hand weapons. They found a handful of useful items in the wrecked tent, including a map in one of the saddlebags that showed a hidden cache in the desert.

The contestants resolved to enter the medical tent to find more supplies, but fell to arguing before they could effect the search. The half-flayed, half-moonscorched nurse came out to greet them, surgical knife glistening with fresh blood. She went down in a hail of bullets before she could flay anyone. The Student wasn't happy about killing a woman, but everyone else was happy about the healing potions and amphetamines recovered from the first aid kit in the tent. The group drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes and passed around a bowl of opium before continuing.

The adventurers got in the truck and drove across the valley to the marked location of the hidden stash. 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 Student gunned the engine and steered the truck into the fissure in the rock that led to the cache. He got the pickup into the gap before the Nomad caught up, so that the monster couldn't follow them in without crashing. The contestants fired at the mechanical monstrosity with their pistols as it drove by, striking its exposed blood vessels behind the metal prow of the head. Taking serious damage and with no way to reach its attackers, the living car drifted around and drove off into the desert.

 

The cache held muskets, spears, swords, a magic belt, and a shotgun that fit the handful of shells the explorers found in the archaeology camp earlier. They parceled out the loot and made a plan to get back to the dig site safely if the Nomad attacked again, using the vehicle as a barricade to fire from. Fortunately, the moonscorched Trucker didn't attack them on the drive back to the pit, apparently chasing other prey across the valley.

 

The excavation area was deserted, sans the driller they encountered last time. A quick survey of the foreman's tent turned up a memo with the location of the explosive storage tent. But it was too late for another drive out into the desert. The contestants knew they were running out of time. They grabbed some gasoline from the utility tent to make firebombs with, and descended the ladder into the pit.