Riverboat Gamber - Session Five

Petzholdt

 

The Human Jack Fatherd, the Halfling Roddy Applecreek, and the Elves Aphono and Datura took the Last Round north, up a tributary river toward the mandrake plantation. The sun rose and scorpions scuttled from beneath the stones dotting the rocky hamada beyond the riverbank. A couple hours north of the rock pile the shore was studded with warning signs. RISK OF INSTANT DEATH - THIS MEANS YOU. Pictures of men covering their ears or dying as a plant headed man emerged from the earth.

 

The plantation sat on a diamond shaped island of fertile volcanic soil, created by a canal dug into the river. In the ruby red light of dawn the prisoners were already hard at work. At the end of the cultivated area was a gallows. A crowd of convicts shouted encouragement as a prisoner slowly strangled himself while he jacked off, providing the seed of a hanged man necessary for mandrake cultivation. The pier was a bas relief liberated from a tomb. It depicted the annual flooding of the River Hog under the protection of a deity who tore his eye out to make the sun. By this point the Gamblers had already stuffed their ears, heeding the warning sign. The man on the docks, a Dwarf leading a yellow coated convict militia, told them it was alright. The first pull wasn't scheduled for another couple hours.

 

The convict infantry were excited by the arrival of a boat filled with pretty Halfling women and delicious iron cup treats. The Dwarf Orgeat Chertscathed held his charges back and asked what the Gamblers wanted. They asked to buy a mandrake. He told them their silver pieces were useless out here, but they could do him a favor and he'd give them two. A tribe of Hogs was menacing his plantation. They lived in a mountain cave at the source of the river. He couldn't send his militia to deal with them because it would weaken his defenses against any other desert dwellers who attacked.

 

The gamblers conferred briefly and agreed to his request. He made it clear that he wasn't interested in recovering stolen items, he wanted scalps as proof that the deed was done. 

 

Roerich

 

The convicts rushed forward to the edge of the pier and shouted to the crew of the Last Round. They had letters they wanted sent back to the real world and items to trade. Handicrafts and things they found in the river muck. Coins dug up from the sand. Magic items. The Halflings didn't let them on the ship but they did brisk trade tossing cigarettes ashore in exchange for goods thrown across the gap. They were absolutely uninterested in talking with Jack (yet another fucking Grain Cleric) but a committee of prisoners conferred solemnly and then sent a representative forward to talk to Datura the Elf. They had a hard job, masturbating while being strangled to grow mandrakes, and it got harder every day as they forgot the faces (and bodies) of their sweethearts back in the Commonwealth. If she gave them something to remember her by, they'd part with an interesting trinket dropped by a zombie.

 

Datura flashed the prisoners. They and the Halflings clapped and cheered. The criminals tossed her a bundle of eight magic arrows. Between that and the goods from the Iron Cup store they liked the Gamblers enough to share what they knew about the Hogs and the river cave. The monstermen had one eye, unlike the rest of the Hogs on the Plain. They fought with spears, nets and bolas. They attacked once during a mandrake harvesting and it broke their assault, instakilling a couple. A couple of the convicts had actually scouted the river cave when they were harvesting stone up in the mountains. They didn't go far inside but it was full of water, beetles that tripped you and monsters that leaped down from columns.

The Gamblers departed the work farm and steamed upriver. Their Halfling chefs treated them to a breakfast of corned beef, duck eggs and fresh pineapple. The magic carpet loaded with wizards, which they had seen a few days earlier, circled overhead. The magic users could be heard arguing, again, and after a heated debate they flew low enough to ask for directions. Was this the way to the Lair of the Linnorm? The Tomb of the Nephilich? Jack didn't know what either of those were. He knew about the Snake Tomb in the cliffs south of the rock pile and he knew about a cave full of Hogmen in the mountains at the end of the tributary stream. The Triumvirate (Weather Wizard Nonesuch Hooper, Sand Sorceress Silvara Grumium, Giant Vivisector Case Extralian) dismissed the Gamblers as mere scalphunters and flew away.

Bilibin

 

The Last Round had a shallow draft but the stream snaked up a cataract at the base of the mountain. The Gamblers got out and hiked up the old cinder cone. Aphono found the path the Hogmen used and led the group up to the mouth of the stream where it spat out of a hole in the rock. The tracks went into a wide mouthed cave. Datura donned the Amulet of Silence 15' radius and the entire gang crept quietly into the cave, lit by the Elf's torch.

 

The cave entrance led into a gallery with a hole in one wall and an underground beach at the shore of the river. Not trusting the entrance, Jack climbed the wall above the water and scouted upriver. He found a camp of cyclops Orcs on a beach further up the stream. Their leader, immobilized by a broken leg, hurriedly issued commands to the band. Warriors grabbed spears, nets and bolas and filtered out into the tunnel system while the children of the tribe fled into the darkness. A Cyclorc animal handler came out of the tunnel leading the biggest rat Jack had ever seen. The beast smelled him and made a distressed sound, prompting him to climb back the way he came.

Jack communicated the situation silently with gestures and drawings. Roddy handed him a fragmentation grenade and he went back up the river to assassinate the leader. The rest of the Gamblers proceeded through the wrecked wall and into a flooded temple complex. Jack edged along the wall, tossed the grenade and wounded the chieftain. He also killed the animal handler who kept the rat restrained. It pounced and knocked the Cleric off the wall and into the water.

The rest of the Gamblers were loath to enter the columned room where strange shapes moved beneath the water. A hand grenade tossed into the pond killed a host of horrible little amphibians lurking beneath the surface, sending them flying in all directions. The Gamblers cautiously advanced, weapons readied. They got to the center of the chamber before the Cyclorcs emerged from the three entrances to the chamber, spears and nets at the ready.

 

Jack fell into the water and was sucked downstream. He caught himself with his spear before he got sucked out of the sump and ejected from the cave. The giant rat attacked him. He struck with his spear but it sank its teeth into him. The infectious disease downed him almost instantly. He fell back into the river and went out of the cave and over the waterfall down the mountain. 

 

Gomez

 

The Gamblers tossed hand grenades to break the assault of the one eyed Hogmen. Datura leaped into the largest surviving concentration of cyclopses and laid about with her magic shamshir. The whole group sank their spears into her but Fat Sun (and a lack of depth perception) spoiled their aim. She forced them back into a flooded room where a thin layer of water concealed a carpet of crustaceans. The Lithopedes scattered underfoot. The Elf kept her footing but half the Orcs went down with twisted ankles. They crawled to safety while the others covered their retreat, dying silently as Datura cut through them with pistol and sword.

With Datura and the amulet of silence in the other room, Roddy and Aphono could hear each other again. So Aphono heard Roddy shriek when the Giant Rat attacked him from behind. They laid into it with their weapons but its infectious bite downed them both. Datura turned around just in time to finish the beast with a pistol shot before it ate the incapacitated Elf.

Jack reentered the cave, soaked and bruised from the fall but cured of disease by the healing hand of the many Gods he worshiped. Datura hauled Roddy and Aphono free of the flooded room before they drowned in two feet of water. She took the amulet of silence out of the cave so she could talk with Jack. Roddy was stable but unable to walk. Aphono couldn't stop vomiting. Jack ate soggy sweettack and recovered his Godly power before calling on the pantheon to cure Aphono's condition. Roddy would just have to wait until they got back to the ship. Datura picked him up and carried him and they went to explore the rest of the dungeon.

 

A pair of horned Centaurs came stumbling out of the flooded temple. They were heavily injured and the male leaned on the female. She raised the net and spear she took from the Orcs, afraid the Gamblers were scalphunters here to kill her. They reassured her that they were only interested in the Cyclors' hides. The Centaurs told them that they found the leader wounded and kicked him to death, along with a couple of the little ones who got in their way. The lady centaur was covered with wounds from small blades and the man had been gelded messily. Datura made sure neither of them were going to die and sent them out of the cave. The Gamblers would take care of the rest.

 

The Gamblers took scalps from the pulped bodies of the Cyclorcs and looted their camp. The canoes were useless, holed by grenade fragmentation. They took a tapestry and a hoard of silver coins and pressed further into the cave. The space beyond the natural limestone cavern was an abandoned temple of the Hammerer, Dwarven God of divine justice. Datura felt a brief rush of superstitious fear. She had reason to be nervous after slaying His faithful and defiling His shrine during the Tournament of the Giantess Morwenna. But Fat Sun had her back, so she led them into the forge room with the anvil altar.

Two Dwarven Kam Warriors clad in a rusty panoply but bearing gems, an enchanted hammer and a fine leather armor rose from the water to challenge the intruders. Jack turned the undead and the Gamblers lay into them as they fled. One dropped in the water and rose again as two spirits, smaller and more ragged than before. The Gamblers pursued the fleeing monsters into the next chamber, an elevated and dry room with columns and Dwarven writing on the wall behind a crumbling bas relief. The Gamblers pressed the attack and let the undead Dwarves gain enough ground to safely finish off with a grenade. The four Kam Warriors became eight and fled down the adjacent passages, looking much worse for wear. That's when the Bloodbeasts leaped from the columns and attacked the Gamblers.

 

There were two of the horrible reptiles. They latched on and sucked blood from the Elves. Datura tossed away the one grappling her in a feat of raw strength. Aphono couldn't shake hers, prompting Datura to intervene. The immobilized Roddy was briefly parasitized by one of the lizards but the Rod of Parrying saved him from lasting harm. Together they slew the Bloodbeasts.

By then the eight Kam Warriors returned to attack again. Though beaten and weakened the warrior spirits nearly finished off the Gamblers, armor deflecting most of their attacks. Jack begged his pantheon for what little healing they could still provide. A voice answered in his head, not one he recognized, in the epigrammatic form of the Dwarven language. Wield Sun, Fire, Thunder. It was their equivalent of "born to kill", something they wrote on their helmets and shields. Datura finally went down under the monster assault but the others finished them off. They recovered an enchanted hammer with an image of the Hammerer, a leather armor, jewelry from the undead warriors and a bunch of corroded jewelry heaped on the executioner block altar. They decided to cut their losses and get out while most of them could still walk.

 

The amulet of silence was gone. The Gamblers looked for it and spotted the mantis woman Colored Shell on the cliffs above the cave entrance. They demanded their item back but she couldn't hear them. She made an obscene hand gesture and tossed them a trinket in trade. Jack caught the ring, put it on and turned invisible.

 

Back at the boat, the Halfling crew had come ashore and were sharing a picnic lunch with the Cyprian Centaurs. The horse-people looked way healthier and when the stud stood up they saw that his testicles had been restored. Captain Encanta Leadcutter explained that the Clerics on board the ship had all pitched in and, together, restored the missing limb. Roddy was a little annoyed they had spent their powers to heal a stranger, but after they finished eating they had enough left over to cure him too.