Riverboat Gambler - Session Two

van der Poel

 

Aphono, Jack, Roddy and Datura sailed up the River Hog through the night. The night brought Ghouls who howled from the riverbanks at the blue glow illuminating the steam from the reactor, thinking it a third moon. Dawn brought giant scorpions out from under the rocks on shore. By day they came across a Grain Cult gunboat, shorn of its mast and anchored by the muddy riverbank. Captain Belkin of the Bread Box explained to the Gamblers that Aldrich's barge of Giants had crippled their vessel with a thrown lightning bolt from extreme range. They were patrolling the river for him and for other hazards, such as the Blue Dragon flying overhead or the savage tribes infesting the desert beyond. The Gamblers hitched the Bread Box to the Last Round and towed them upriver to the nearest village. The Iron Cup outlet served coffee and the Halflings played marching songs with Datura.

PROVENDER: A Parka Worn Backwards

thefirsttinghewasawareofwashisownhandexploringthecontoursofthebonesinsidethemaninfrontofhimandallhecouldfeelwasajoythathnowhewasaliveandadesiretoknowthefaceofhisfatherbutthefacewasobscuredandhisfathercasthimawayintothedarkandemptyspaceabove

PROVENDER: From These Dreams You Don't Wake Up

Marc rolled his mousewheel and chewed through the backscroll since he last visited. It had been hell finding the page. There was a chance every time that the server had been nuked and his account with it. 

Not much discussion. The usual debate about whether it was the real thing. It was an interesting discussion but it wasn't the point. The current streak was still twelve nights in a row, but the guy had stopped posting.

Enough dicking around. Pinned messages.

He fullscreened the webm and it played automatically.

Fighting Fantasy Introductory RPG: Into The Nest

Enormous burrowing insects have exposed the entrance to an ancient tomb. Only a greedy fool would descend into the bug infested hole to pillage the treasure therein. 

 

PROVENDER: False Retreat

Dune predicted that any genuine discovery of the New Age would be co opted by The Man. Psychedelic drugs, tantric sex, yoga, the human potential movement, it would all serve the interests of billion dollar corporations and government conspiracies. 

 

Today instead of maintaining adequate staffing levels, companies use "mindfulness" to fight burnout. Programmers microdose LSD to make themselves more productive. And Movement Medicine instructor Edwina "Ed" Christ holds ecstatic dance retreats to help employees of billion dollar firms open their third eye.

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Ten

Tiber the Salt Knight stood outside the grotto at Eldermass, the Conclave of Seers. The Screaming Seer leaned against the cave entrance, not screaming. It looked like he was crying but when he saw the Salt Knight he got it together and passed him a note.

 

Riverboat Gambler - Session 1

Five adventurers gathered on the deck of the timberclad gunboat Last Round as it sailed up the Hog delta and into the mouth of the river proper.

• Aphono, Elf
• Datura, Elf
• Jack Fatherd, Coureur des bois
• Roddy Applecreek, Mad bomber
• Zigar Kneecapper, Reformed thug

Their mission: to hunt down and kill the criminal mastermind Aldrich Deathsbane, human king of Giants, and claim the bounty on his hide. With them, a crew of nineteen Halflings and a single human. Survivors from Roddy's village or the surrounding farms destroyed by the Giants during the Marriage of the Giantess Morwenna. They brought muskets, magic spells, a pair of swivel guns and a cannon mounted to a rotating turret. They sailed under steam, powered by a slime that heated water poured into a boiler. 

The land around the river was cut with wadis and arroyos, channels where the river once flowed. A caravan of wild camels came to the shore to drink, drawing curious Halflings. Distant mountains gleamed marble-white to the southwest. The chaotic terrain gave way to flat plains and an oasis where the adventurers watched a crimson death worm ambush a wallowing wildebeest, then fall beneath the hooves and horns of its fellow ungulates. Most life on the Plain was concentrated around the river and after the wildebeest came herd of elephants. The Hobbits were astonished. Some pointed their guns, afraid that they might shoot fire from their trunks or launch their tusks like flying spears. Jack reassured them. Elephants were herbivores, gentle and even kind unless roused to a killing frenzy by a threat to the herd.

 

The elephants thought the boat was another elephant. The calves trumpeted and the adults flicked their ears in a futile attempt at communication.

 

PROVENDER: Dharmapala

 
PhD student Lara “Lagartija” Schliemann came to Buckshaw Island with her UNLP biology class to catalog the island’s unique plants and animals. Buckshaw is sometimes called Ultima Thule for its position one island south of Thule, in the Sandwich archipelago between Argentina and Antarctica. The last update from expedition mentioned a “crashed submarine” found in a sea cave. Ominous glowing slime smeared in frozen streaks around the site prompted the professor to evacuate the cavern. He had a devil of a time stopping the rambunctious doctoral students from sneaking back to take pictures and snatch “artifacts”.

Months later, search and rescue ships found their shelters and equipment intact but abandoned. There was no sign of the researchers or the mysterious cave they found. The search was called off due to encroaching ice which would have trapped Naval Prefecture rescue team on the island. The Argentine government blamed the UK for the disappearance.

The second group to disappear was a shipload of salvagers from Ushuaia. They never told anyone where they were going, afraid someone would loot the site before them.

 

Riverboat Gambler: Hex Travel and Ship Travel

When Diogo saw the column of ashes upheld the wind he thought the land was being scourged. The land was always being scourged. It was scourged by the undead and it was scourged by the hogs. The barge of giants scourged it when they passed by and the Threshers chased after them with literal scourges in hand. 

The column of ashes came out of a boat that came around the bend. By that point he was already hiding in the reeds. Discharging his musket would sound the alarm, if nobody else had already seen the smoke. It would also let them know where he was hiding. So he waited to see what happened.

The boat was propelled by a pair of huge discs that rotated to churn the water. The discs spun by themselves. Diego imagined that inside the boat was a very strong and very fast monster who ran in a wheel. The boat drifted toward the riverbank and stopped close enough to let down a gangway onto the solid part of the bank. Down the plank came the first member of the shore party. She wore a buffcoat and a belt with a small disc shaped shield and a knife that looked like a short sword on her hip. Over this she wore an apron with an image of a goblet clasped in a merciless fist. She carried a metal urn that steamed. A human followed her. He wore his apron over mail and carried another urn in one hand and a folding table in the other. He deployed the table and on the table the urns. The half-woman returned with cups of lightweight metal.

The Clerics had taught Diogo to read. He could make out THE LAST ROUND on the side of the boat but he was too far to read the embossed characters on the sides of the urns.

 

The smell hit him and he almost fainted. His first instinct was to spring from cover, no longer afraid, and beg for a cup. The Goddess was good and brought fourth things to nourish man. Nothing that smelled so good could be poison. The ones who brought it could not be evil. 

 

Riverboat Gambler - D6 Bounty Hunters and Their Ships

Mather Brown

 

By night the Great House of stone with its many statues poled its way up the river. Inside the old man leaned on his short staff in front of the altar and sung the story of the Despoina in the halls of the Hoard King. He told the story to the statues and he told it to the wind and the night creatures. It was an old story and a long one but he remembered it word for word by striking the staff on the ground at regular intervals to keep the meter. He spoke to the idol and hoped she liked the story, since it was about her sister who she had not seen in a long time. The wood was so old and so stained with soot from countless burnt offerings that it was almost shapeless. The shadow cast by the flame was sharper. He could just make out her shield and her helmet.

 

Something flew into the temple. As he had done in a thousand ambushes he flung himself to the floor and crawled toward his panoply. He counted on the bronze statues of the temple to keep the intruder busy until he could gird himself with domed shield and curved sword. The bronze men rested their bronze bows at their sides and did nothing. He looked up from the floor and saw a little owl perched on the statue.

For a moment he let himself hope. But it wasn't her. It couldn't be her because she would have appeared sooner if she had the power. If she had the power to send the little owl to listen to the story then she wouldn't have left him alone with only her shadow.

 

He stood. As he often did, he told the bronze men to burn him on the altar when he died. The bronze men said nothing. The owl said nothing. The stone women pulled the Great House up the river one handful of water at a time.

PROVENDER: Three Rites of Death

Mowry

 

After the sun fell down the view was nonexistent. Black mountains, black sky, black clouds, black stars. I was exhausted after the plane and the shuttle and the endless forest service roads giving way to private gravel driveways. All I wanted to do was sleep. But the festivities had already begun and I didn't want anyone narcing to my boss that I had skipped out on the first training. Better to merge with the crowd and slip away once I'd been counted present. 

 

The venue was a handsome alpine lodge, mutilated with modern decor that gave it the feel of a hotel conference room. The facilitators wore slippery yellow robes like raincoats. They smiled like you do when someone takes too long in front of you in line. One shoved a table and folded the area rug back in place with a foot. It had been misaligned. The other listened at the door. It was performative because we could all hear it.

 

bam bam bam bambambam bam bam bambambam bam bam

 

I couldn't tell if the heavy wooden element at chest level was a handle or a bar to hold the door shut from the outside. He pulled on it and it opened without a sound.

 

It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. Bodies packed so tight they couldn't possibly move but moving nonetheless. Thrashing and stomping. Carried forward and being carried in turn. A swirling dark pattern to fill the windowless and almost unlit space. The whirling ant mill implied an eye of the storm at the center but promised annihilation to anyone who tried to swim through the mass and reach it.

  

There was a little light from somewhere. There must have been or I couldn't see it. There was enough that I recognized someone in the crowd. I remembered her from the ride up, the only person in the van who listened attentively to the concierge's excited lecture. Something about a dolmen beneath the lodge, preserved in its original condition in a high ceilinged chamber beneath the original structure and still enclosed today a century later. She had gone up ahead of me and now she flashed before my gaze. Bruised face slick with drool, bedroom eyes half lidded. She snapped away into the human current and I was back on my uncle's farm. Watching him slam the emergency stop a moment after the farmhand disappeared beneath the grain. Like it could reverse the arc. Bear the man up out of the silo. Un-collapse his lungs.

I turned to yell at the raincoats. To do something. Pull the fire alarm. Call a time out. Like hell was I going in there.

I didn’t see who shoved me.

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Nine

 

The Company recovered from injuries sustained in the tournament. They noted a strange woman who treated Tiber's wounds. They couldn't get a good look at her face and said something that convinced Tiber to leave with her. 

Per tradition the Glass Knight opened the Feast of the Stars by distributing accolades to those who had best served the realm. For retrieving the Crown and restoring his faculties, the Glass Knight promoted Tiber and Auckland to his council. He thanked Ada for taking care of him for many years but couldn't promote her because she was already his right hand. He also thanked the deceased Pearl Knight Lauder for saving his wife from the Underworld and his daughter Gert for taking over the holding at Cuganscove. 

 

Riverboat Gambler: Keyed Map

No more fiction. What happens next will be decided by the actions of the players.