Roddy, Jack, Datura and Zigar shopped at the Potion Addict. They bought food, reagents to make hand grenades, and contemplated buying a Potion of Water Breathing. If someone swam under the Destroyer cult boat with an explosive charge they could detonate it at the same time as Roddy cleared the blockage in the river, letting the Gamblers proceed without fear of pursuit. The Bullywugs dissuaded them. The narrowboat was pulled by huge marine worms who would smell intruders and attack them underwater.
The Gamblers waited until dawn when the sun scraped the rubble pile clean of swarming undead. Roddy and his team planted the barrel while the adventurers at the bar, the Blackmath cultists and even the tribes of the plain looked on in anticipation. The blast created a big wave and a plume of water and debris, which the cultists eagerly sped into aboard their narrowboat, urging the worms into the spray and accepting minor casualties from the falling stones as the price of doing business. The Last Round spooled up the propellers and raced after them, taking the three mutants rescued from the Barbican along for the ride.
The land upriver of the Potion Addict was cut with arroyos where the river had once flowed, and would flow again if it overflowed its banks. A herd of wild horses raced through the canyons, sending up clouds of dust visible for miles. The canyons turned to a forest of cacti, not invasive teddy bear cholla from Cactus Garden but true native saguaro twenty feet high. Owls and bats dozed in the shade and birds snacked on the fruit. A Blue Dragon flew high overhead, rolling lazily in the air beyond the reach of its breath weapon or the most powerful armaments aboard the steamboat. Captain Leadcutter sounded the alarm and the crew beat to quarters, running out the main gun (which Roddy had given enough traverse to fire on airborne targets). The dragon flew south without giving any indication it noticed the vessel and disappeared over the horizon.
A flock of domestic ducks quacked from the opposite end of the annihilated village. Jack found them swimming in the canal. On the other side of the water, the regular sandal footprints led southwest into the desert. The moving temple which Aldrich took as his ship had taken passage over land, a direct route to the mysterious snake tomb.
Datura found a corpse. A single body which hadn't been eaten or burned. Roddy immediately clocked the facedown Cleric as an obvious trap. Datura ignored him and flipped the dead man over, hoping to find treasure beneath. She was correct. The seagreen fulgurite shimmered in the moonlight before discharging a bolt of Storm Giant lightning directly into her.
Fat Sun shrugged and called her unlucky. But Iron Cup refused to let the primitive magic of the Giants prevail. The Grain Goddess said "not here, in this place consecrated to me". The Liberator said "I'm not done with you, bitch". The Tower of Pain luxuriated in the feeling of every nerve in the Elf's body catching fire. Moonshades thought it would be funny if she survived. Natural Justice granted that, though Datura had done his people wrong, she was still necessary for greater vengeance. Old Man River rolled over and turned into a fish. Leper Heart was silent, burned all black. By the intervention of every God worshiped by every human and Halfling on the expedition, Datura survived instant death. She cheered and took the dead man's holy symbol as a trophy.
Roddy examined the shattered glass. The Giants had somehow bottled lightning. If he could figure out how to replicate the effect he'd be master of all he surveyed.
There was no sign of the Black Math cultists or their chariot of worms. They might have gone up the tributary river or down the main channel but there was no indication they had followed Aldrich's ship of fools over land. The Halflings herded the ducks onto the boat, penning them next to Aphono's hyrax.
The Gamblers plotted a course up the river that would take them as close to the tomb as possible before they stepped ashore. They figured Aldrich was taking the direct route since his walking temple could travel day and night without sleep, and the consecrated ground would stop the undead boarding it at night. They'd have to move fast to catch up, so they bluelined the reactor. Roddy was concerned that the field test might not go as well as his experiments under controlled conditions but they made good time, steaming six hecksleagues upriver at twice the usual speed before the gauges and dials on the boiler warned him the slime needed a break.
By twilight Datura's Elven greensight espied a ship concealed in the lush greenery that covered the banks of the river. A riverboat without cannons but covered with armed sailors, deliberately concealed with reeds and palm leaves. Jack hailed the strange ship as the Last Round pulled up alongside them, keeping in mind the minimum range of the main gun. Captain Al Abbas Lionheart hailed him. He was happy to see an avatar of civilization in these wastes. The river was full of pirates, monsters and treasure hunters chasing some great reward. Just a watch ago a tall ship sped by on two thin blades, propelled by a genie and a spinning windmill.
Zigar, versed in warfare, identified Captain Lionheart and his crew as pirates waiting in ambush. The buccaneers were scared of the Gamblers and pretending to be normal people because they didn't think they could beat them (they having muskets and swords but no cannon). Datura took over the negotiations and laid down the law. The Gamblers would let the Captain go in exchange for a cut of his ill gotten gains. He reluctantly parted with 2,000 silver pieces, then tried to bamboozle Jack (who he misidentified as the captain of the Last Round) with a casting of Charm Person from his enchanted sword. Datura extorted him for the sword as well and the pirates slunk off with a warning. The Gamblers hadn't seen the last of Captain Al Abbas Lionheart.
Luiza, sole human among the ship's Halfling crew, gave Roddy a present. A red and brown speckled beret, whose meaning was opaque until she explained to him that she was the slave who had spotted him in the kitchen when he booby trapped the cake. She had kept quiet and the bomb had killed the Giantess' soldiers at the wedding. Roddy offered a gift in return but she wouldn't accept. His gift to her was freedom and the life of adventure. Roddy saw the amulets around her neck. The silver coin with the image of Fever River, the wreath of the Grain Goddess and the double crescent of Moonshades adopted from her Halfling friends.
So he told her about his God. If she liked freedom and explosions and killing Giants and courage then she might consider the Great Lord of Embers. Like Enlightenment he inspired his servants as he pleased but unlike the Hidden God he inspired them to fight for justice. Roddy had built a floating temple to Him, a fire that burned forever.
The shore was choked with coconut palms and invasive cycads from the Lost World. By night they came on the next village. The fields of pineapple and passionfruit were overrun with undead and the Gamblers thought the settlement ransacked like the last. But above the fields was a spire of rock on which the villagers had built their homes, with narrow paths sealed by heavy gates the monsters couldn't breach. One side of the pluton faced the river where a pier made from salvaged stone granted access by boat. The Gamblers docked the Last Round and stepped ashore.
A bullet skipped off the stone pier, fired by a musketeer on the parapet of the fortification above. He shouted a warning down. The town didn't need any more filthy ratmen sneaking about. They could leave the way they came in. Jack made the sign of the Goddess and the sentries immediately recognized him as Jack the Giantkiller, despite his malformed appearance courtesy of the healing God Leper Heart. The Gamblers ascended the stairs and entered the village.
The farmers in the pluton village were sharecroppers, displaced by some disaster or act of expropriation in the Commonwealth and given a new place to farm by the Grain Cult. Their leader was Esteban, a shovelhead Cleric annointed to provide the most absolute basic services to his new flock. The militia leader Grocio apologized profusely for firing on the Gamblers. He wouldn't dream of raising a hand to Jack, or Roddy the Amazing Alchemist, or Zigar the representative of Iron Hand. The villagers treated the Gamblers to pineapples, fresh bread and passionfruit liquor. Zigar supplied coffee from his Iron Cup stash while they went over the situation.
The farmers went into the fortified village at night and let the undead wander the fields. The zombies couldn't get inside the base and didn't bother the crops because they didn't recognize them as food. The real problem was the Ratmen. They stole things, spread disease and tried to kidnap children. They came from somewhere south, which the Gamblers identified as the serpent temple in the ridgeline where Aldrich was headed. A trio of adventurers went south to deal with the Rats, but hadn't returned. They hadn't seen the worm boat or the floating temple.
The villagers updated the Gamblers' map with nearby farms. There was a mandrake plantation up a nearby tributary of the Hog, worked by convicts transported to the frontier under a penal lease. Mandrakes, with their instant death scream, could be a powerful weapon if the Gamblers could pay the market rate of 5k a bulb. They'd seen what the Giants could do and needed every advantage they could get.
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