Unknown Armies: A Bed of Roses Playtest Two

The year was 1521. The place was Tenochtitlan, head of the Triple Alliance of the Aztec Empire. The island-city had just been conquered following a ninety day siege by a coalition of Spanish Conquistadors and their Nahua-speaking allies from neighboring city-states. Weakened by starvation and smallpox, the surviving Mexica were at the mercy of their conquerors’ insatiable lust for gold.

 

Jason Field

 

In a Pochteca Guild Hall, four merchants were confined to a storeroom amid sacks of cocoa beans and bolts of cotton cloth - the majority of the Guild’s liquid wealth, which the Spaniards had no interest in.

• Bleeding Scorpion, Merchant and veteran knight
  
• Jumping Spider, Merchant and luxury goods trader
  
• Yellow Thorn, Merchant and far-traveler
  

Their hands were tied and they only had a moment to contemplate what they would do next, before a group of hairy men from the other side of the world hustled them out into the banquet hall.

The beautiful feather coats and dyed fabrics which adorned the walls had been torn down by the Conquistadors in search of gold, the only treasure they had any interest in. The Spaniards who retained their metal armor this far into the campaign had stripped out of it in the choking heat. They wore fat-bladed arming swords or long rapiers in belts and baldricks. None carried firearms, keeping their matchlock long guns ready to fire would have been an unnecessary hassle.

 

In the center of the room, the Spaniards had kindled a fire, using the guild’s records, furniture, and art from the walls as fuel. A burly White man in a brightly colored surcoat and a one armed Tlaxcaltec interpreter clad in a beautiful blue mantle and Spanish sword belt waited impatiently by the blaze.

 

The Spaniard pointed to Yellow Thorn.

 

Felix Parra

 

The Captain's Spanish goons (the translator was the only Red man in the room) hustled their first victim over to the fire pit. They tied his feet, sit him on the lip of the fire pit, and position his soles within searing distance of the blaze.

 

The Spaniard said something. The Tlaxcaltec asked Yellow Thorn where the gold was hidden.

 

Yellow Thorn said the gold was hidden in the temple. The Tlaxcaltec said all the temples had already been looted. Yellow Thorn's feet began to crispify. Jumping Spider asked the interpreter how he'd like to get his arm back. The Tlaxcaltec didn't believe him, but agreed that if the merchant could somehow restore his missing arm, he'd give Spider his knowledge of the Spanish language. Jumping Spider used his merchant powers to make the trade, giving up his right arm and learning the Spanish language - allowing him to negotiate directly with the Spanish leader Captain Domingo. The stunned Spaniards brandished their weapons at the Indian sorcerer, terrified and fascinated by the transfer of the arm from one man to the other.

 

Jumping Spider asked the Captain how he'd like to be twenty years younger. The Captain agreed that if he were twenty years younger, he would give the merchant his freedom. The Merchant gave up twenty years of life and the Spaniard was young again. He made good on his bargain and released Jumping Spider, then turned to continue torturing the other two Mexica. He had been a young poor man before, and preferred to be a young man with lots of gold. Yellow Thorn and Bleeding Scorpion worked out a plan before their feet were burned to a crisp. They would each give Jumping Spider some life years to de-age him back to the point where he could still adventure, then Spider would convince Captain Domingo (the Spanish leader) that it was actually the Tlaxcalan Wooden Spear who was holding out on them.

The Spaniard told Jumping Spider that if he was lying, if Wooden Spear didn't have any treasure, he would kill the merchant instead. Wooden Spear told Jumping Spider, in Nahuatl, that he was a moron. He would have to show the Spaniard gold either way, and having him tortured wouldn't help. Jumping Spider reported to Captain Domingo in Spanish that the interpreter had given up a stash of treasure: gold stashed in the house of birds at the menagerie of Tenochtitlan. (Yellow Thorn did have treasure stashed in the ruins of her house just past the zoo, but the real plan was to ditch the Spaniards before uncovering it).

With the location of the treasure secured, the Spaniard had no further use for the Tlaxcalan, and dispatched him with a thrust of his bollock dagger. The merchants watched impassively. They had seen hundreds, thousands of Nahua die flowery deaths on the summits of pyramids, on the battle stone, at the temple of Xipe Totec, in the sacred wells of Tlaloc... What was one more?

Unknown Artist

At its height, Tenochtitlan was supplied with fresh water by aqueducts, and food by canoes or causeways connecting it to the mainland. When the religious authorities sacrificed captives en-masse following a successful military campaign, the corpses were eaten and the inedible parts publicly displayed or hauled away on municipal garbage barges poled along the fractal branches of its canals.

The Conquistadores destroyed the aqueducts. The municipal garbage barges sank under the weight of Spanish cannon fire and the rams of their enormous warships. The Tenochtitlan the merchants and their Spanish captors emerged into was a reeking flat expanse of rubble, choked by billowing clouds of dust and droning clouds of flies. The lake was thick with excrement and rotting bodies. The Guild Hall was in the Sacred Precinct, in the center of Tenochtitlan. As they exited, the players could see the Spaniards at the summit of the Templo Mayor, pushing rubble down the slope of the one remaining pyramid to make room for a cross.

 

The zoo, and Yellow Thorn's house, were both in the cuepopan district of Tenochtitlan. With Captain Domingo and his goons as their Spanish escort, the group could pass unbothered by roving platoons of Spaniards and their indigenous allies. Or so they thought. A group of Tlaxcaltec warriors blocked the party's path, led by a warrior clad in a splendid red mantle and gunbelt of woven reeds, which held a matchlock pistol. The warrior demanded that Captain Domingo turn over Bleeding Scorpion (whose reputation as a mighty knight apparently carried as far as the Tlaxcalan Confederacy) so they could punish him. Captain Domingo refused and the red-coated Red man put a hand on his pistol. The conquistadors readied their crossbow, their arquebus and their swords, but the Nahua simply drew his pistol, which was unlit, and "fired" into the air. The action snapped shut and Captain Domingo reeled as though shot, momentarily terrified. He shook his head and agreed the Tlaxcaltecas could have the knight.

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Yellow Thorn suspected that the guy with the pistol had used some kind of magick on the Spanish. The Tlaxcalans worshipped the Smoking Mirror Tezcatlipoca, black handed god of sorcery, and it wouldn't be out of character for them to start casting at the most inconvenient time for their Aztec enemies. Bleeding Scorpion had a more constructive idea. The red-mantled fighter, whose name was Strikes With His Elbows, clearly craved recognition as a mighty warrior. So he offered to simply him sell his social status as a knight renowned across the One World. Fights With His Elbows laughed and agreed. Bleeding Scorpion kissed the earth at his feet and was reduced to the status of a commoner, while Fights With His Elbows was elevated to a feared fighter. It hurt to give up his reputation, but Bleeding Scorpion privately thought that maybe anonymity was beneficial in a world where unwashed foreigners tortured anyone who looked important.

The Tlaxcaltecas let the group pass unmolested, and they continued to the great menagerie of Tenochtitlan. The menagerie had houses of beasts, houses of birds, aquatic animals and a "human zoo" that exhibited people with deformities, like a circus sideshow. The fastest route to the quetzal exhibit, where Yellow Thorn alleged his treasure was hidden, was across the stone walkways dividing the aquatic enclosures. For a moment, they thought they saw a dwarf on a distant ledge, wearing a red mantle far too big for her as a skirt, waving at them before she toppled backwards and fell into one of the enclosures.

 

A stone bridge led over a pool of brackish water, and the Aztecs decided this was where they'd ditch the Spaniards. Yellow Thorn would pretend that his roasted feet made it impossible to walk, and when the Spaniards got close the merchants would try to shove them off the causeway into the water below. This master plan was interrupted by the appearance of a strange creature: an enormous hump-backed cow with a beautiful curly mane and giant horns, which pranced out of the entrance to the hall of birds and stood at the opposite end of the bridge over the water. 

Yellow Thorn had traveled across the One World, and recognized the creature as a fearsome beast from the far north. The Spaniards were similarly perturbed by the "Mexican Bull", which pranced ominously the way these creatures tended to do before charging. Bleeding Scorpion ominously noted the presence of an enormous fin in the pool below. They were standing on a bridge over a shark tank, about to be attacked by a buffalo.

Well, there was no better time to make a break for it. The Mexica turned and rushed the Spaniards, shouting in fear of the bison. They barreled through the conquistadors, sending the crossbowman and the arquebusier over the side of the causeway and leaving them hanging on to the edge for dear life. Bleeding Scorpion shoved a rodelero off the ledge and the swordsman grabbed his mantle, nearly taking the Mexica merchant with him. Bleeding Scorpion undid the clasp on his cape and the Spaniard fell into the water. A bull shark, gift of Maya traders from the south to the previous Revered Speaker Ahuizotl, breached the surface and bit the conquistador in half.

The merchants made a break for it. Captain Domingo struck Bleeding Scorpion on the back with his broadsword, dealing him a serious wound. Then the charging buffalo hit the Spaniards. One of them was gored on its horns, the Captain was tossed and fell into the shark tank. The pochteca didn't stick around to see if he sank or swam. The red-skirted dwarf laughed at them from her perch as they fled.

The gang skirted the zoo and found the ruins of Yellow Thorn's house. It was ruined, but his stash of treasure was where he left it, in a hidden chamber under the floor. The gang cleared away the heaped bricks, dropped down into the basement and looted up. The treasure hoard held a mantle decorated with thousands of beautiful hummingbird feathers, exquisitely carved bone-handled knives of chert, turquoise and topaz gemstones, cocoa beans and several quills full of gold dust. The merchants traded wound points around and pounded a few cups of chocolate to get everyone in fighting shape, then planned their next move.

Jumping Spider and Bleeding Scorpion had their own treasure hoards, which would be good to retrieve before escaping the city (which was everyone's ultimate goal). Bleeding Scorpion's family were on the mainland somewhere, but Yellow Thorn's two sons Jade Fist and Topaz Foot were somewhere in the city. The group agreed that finding them took priority over extracting the treasure, especially since they could sell the location of the remaining stashes rather than the actual contents if worse came to worst. 

 

It was quite possible that Yellow Thorn's sons were dead, they were fighting age men and would have thought nothing about throwing themselves on a halberd to kill one last Spaniard before going to their reward in the land where the sun went down. But he also knew that they were alcoholics. As hard as he tried to get them off the stuff they were fiends for octli, the white stuff made from fermented agave sap. And the only place left in the city where you might find booze was the Yopico, temple of the flayed god Xipe Totec whose rites included drunken capering of pampered sacrificial victims.

The Yopico was close enough, was actually visible from the ruins of the house. Cortes burned it a year ago, a couple days before his initial ejection from the city during La Noche Triste. The viscera which the priests allowed to accumulate on every surface went up in smoke. The heat cracked the limestone cladding and the rock beneath. The charred black spire cast a malign shadow over the city, like a giant rotten tooth. The three pochteca approached the ruined temple. Yellow Thorn called out to his sons, hoping they were somewhere inside the enormous cave-like entrance at the base of the pyramid.

An enormous voice called back. It asked who was there. If it was the lord, come to put an end to the tragic realm of existence once and for all.

 

A giant hand emerged from the dark, large as a man. The hand pulled an enormous body out into the light of the sun. A primordial giant, blind and weeping blood from the meatjelly in the empty sockets. Bleeding Scorpion stood stupified. Yellow Thorn and Jumping Spider pulled the poor guy out of the way as the giant crawled forward, questing hands looking for things to grasp.

Rafael Mena

The merchants quickly negotiated the transfer of avatar points onto Jumping Spider's character sheet, buffing his powers high enough that he could make deals with supernatural beings. Then he called out to the giant, keeping a building in between him and the monster's questing hands just in case it didn't feel like negotiating. The giant asked if he was the lord, the Flayed Man here to put an end to his suffering. There had been a man in the temple, who drank the sacred octli spirits and donned a coat of skin and went out capering along the south causeway. The giant didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to be the last one, dishonorably alive after everyone else died at the end of the world. Jumping Spider offered to kill him, if the giant would give up his fearsome aspect. The giant Flayman immediately agreed. Jumping Spider placed one of Yellow Thorn's jade trinkets in the giant's mouth and slashed its throat open, digging deep with his chert knife to find the jugular. He gained the terrifying visage of the monster, although not its prodigious size.

 

The group headed to the southern gate of the city, on the assumption that the drunkard clad in human skin was one of Yellow Thorn's missing sons. They encountered a group of Aztecs picking through the rubble in search of food. One of them, the warrior Arrows Falling From the Sun, gave a shout of elation at Jumping Spider's monstrous appearance. He was all ready to be eaten by a primordial giant, the most hardcore flowery death that a shameless individual such as himself could ever hope for. Jumping Spider neglected to devour him. He was on his way to fight the Spanish, and if Arrows Falling From the Sun wanted to go to the place where the sun set, he would do the same. The warrior joined the party, and the group continued on their way.

 

At the south causeway, a group of Red men and women dressed in a mix of Nahua and Spanish clothing milled around a tzompantl, a rack of skulls. They had removed the severed heads and were using it to hang people. Several dead men dangled from the top rack, and a black robed priest sprinkled baptismal water on a bound victim clad in a coat of skin, who laughed in his face. It was Jade Fist, Yellow Thorn's son. Jumping Spider told Arrows Falling From the Sun to attack the Christian converts. The Mexica warrior picked up a brick and threw it, hitting the priest in the head and knocking him over. The converts turned and saw Jumping Spider, who had assumed the fearsome appearance of the giant. Half of them lost their nerve and fled, the other half charged the pagans who dared raise a hand to their confessor.

 

Arrows Falling From the Sun stepped out to challenge the crowd and was swiftly chopped to bits. Jumping Spider hastily negotiated the transfer of further avatar points from the other pochteca, giving him access to the merchant's highest level avatar channel. Now the converts would have to pay before they struck him. The Christians milled about, counting cocoa beans and bits of silver while Jumping Spider made a run for it.

With the crowd drawn away, Bleeding Scorpion and Yellow Thorn rushed forward to free Jade Fist from the priest. The old man got up off the ground just in time for the duo to set upon him, and thrust his crucifix forward in a frantic attempt to fend off their stone knives. He hit Yellow Thorn in the throat, crushing his windpipe. The merchant fell over on top of the priest, slowly suffocating. The red skirted dwarf casually untied Jade Fist, then remembered she too was supposed to be bound and thrust her hands behind her back. Together with Yellow Thorn, he stomped the priest to death.

Jumping Spider jumped into a canal to escape his pursuers. He landed atop a rubbery expanse of flesh and at first assumed he had landed on a corpse. Then the thing underneath him swam down the canal, and he realized it was an enormous salamander. The beast Cipactli dove beneath the surface to avoid a mound of rubble, and Jumping Spider held on to its back to avoid being swept away. The primordial monster spoke in his mind: for ninety days and ninety nights, he had feasted on corpses dropped into the lake. What did Jumping Spider have for him that would taste better than his flesh? 

Jumping Spider sold Cipactli his fearsome visage in exchange for a ride out of the city. The beast did a celebratory roll, dunking him in the water. Then it carried him to shore.

Yellow Thorn slowly suffocated on the remains of his throat. Jade Fist begged his father not to die in front of him like this. Yellow Thorn told his son he loved him, and if he would promise to survive and to quit drinking he would give him all the power left to him. Jade Fist agreed, and took on all the powers from his father's character sheet. Then the merchant Yellow Thorn died a Flowery Death, killed while saving his child. Jade Fist took a jade trinket from his father's pack, smashed it on the flagstones of the street, and placed a shard in his father's mouth.

The converts who fled the fearsome "giant" were ashamed of their cowardice, and returned to find a pair of heathens alongside the dead body of their confessor. Bleeding Scorpion and Jade Fist fled the scene, the latter doffing his jeweled coat of human skin to effect a speedier escape. Bleeding Scorpion spotted a canoe in one of the canals, concealed under a toppled awning. The duo leaped into the boat and shoved off, poling their way out of the city and onto Lake Tenochtitlan. The converts tossed spears and darts with obsidian points, but missed every shot. With his father's knowledge of travel by water, the son Jade Fist rowed into a swift current that would carry them ashore. Then the duo lay down and played dead, so the Spanish gunboat which sailed by assumed it was yet another reed boat filled with dead Indians.