Jack, Roddy and Datura supervised the excavation of the debris obstructing the ships. They mounted up and used the shallow draft of their vessels to skate over the thin layer of water covering the rock fill. Grain barges coming down the river would be in trouble, but they were on a mission to pursue a dangerous fugitive and couldn't wait.
The Mowers held funeral games aboard the Bottle Full Of Rain for the four dead cultists. They wrestled one another and challenged Alice Woodfingers. She denied them catharsis. The strength of her biomechanical arms was given by the Goddess, it wasn't fair to pit them against the strength of men. One man responded that an unfair contest between man and God was the essence of life itself. Alice nodded and tossed him into the river.
There was a ship upriver. A live tree with leaves for sails and roots for rudders, and a flock of Rocs nested in its branches. It was crewed by Elves, who shouted a greeting to Datura. She had been to long among the groundlings. The sun had baked her brain and she needed to rest in the shade. She wasn't interested in flirtation or religious debates, so the Elf captain Naftiesh got right to the point: they were pursuing Aldrich because he worshiped Bloodfeast, the enemy of life. The Gamblers were pursuing Aldrich for the bounty. They ought to team up.
The Halflings had never seen a living Elven ship before. The Grain Cult were less thrilled to see them. The Goddess was the foe of the traditional Elven religions. A conflict as old as agriculture and hunter gatherers. The Gamblers mollified Alice and told Datura they accepted the offer. The living ship Ollerganzu was slower than the Last Round and the Bottle Full Of Rain, but they could greenline the tree to keep up with the pace of the modern ships.
By night a hanger of bats passed across the face of Great Moon. Huge flying foxes with fifteen foot wingspans. Roddy had an idea. He took some leftover copper pipes from the ship's engine and used it to make some overhanging metal grating for bats to dangle from. Jack piled fruit and flowers under the grating on the cabbage deck and used the Rod of Bat Friendship from the Mountain of the Mad Marquis to call down the monsters down.
A flight of giant bats alighted on the Last Round. The Halflings had never seen bats larger than they could fit in their hand, but knew better than to fire on the strange animals. Jack spoke to the bats and asked if they wanted to adventure with him. The bats thanked him for the food but couldn't go adventuring without the permission of their King. Jack asked for an audience and the flying foxes said they would take him to the King's lair. The Gamblers negotiated and decided to bring Wellington, a Halfling mage from the ship's crew, so they'd have arcane casting support if things got ugly. They left Captain Leadcutter in charge of the ship and Alice in charge of the fleet (though the Elves wouldn't acknowledge her authority they'd travel behind her). Then they mounted the bats and flew off into the night. West across the plain, trivially traversing terrain that would take them all day to cross on foot.
Five pairs of eyes peered out of the darkness. They were joined by a sixth, larger pair. The Bat King and five Vambats emerged from the tomb. Roddy, freshly schooled in the dungeoneer's art of monstrology, recognized them as terrifying undead beasts. Wellington fingered the lock of his musket, but held his fire. Jack made his offering to the King, who ignored the fruit and sucked blood from the open wound on his hand. After prolonged feeding the King gave him a final lick and announced that he had properly supplicated himself. Though he wore the symbol of the hated Grain Cult, who built villages in his demesne without offering him his due, he would grant the Friend of Bats five giant flying foxes to serve as mounts on his adventures. Jack suggested ways to deescalate the situation with the village to the south but the King wasn't interested. The Gamblers got back on their mounts and left.
The Gamblers flew south over the plain. They wanted to fly over the ranching village before meeting up with the fleet. High in the air, in the red light of dawn, they spotted Aldrich's floating temple a league away. It was made of polished marble and reflected a lot of light, or they wouldn't have seen it. It was headed for the village, moving slowly down the river. The Gamblers formulated a plan, fast. Jack and Datura would land and evacuate the homesteaders before the Giants arrived. Roddy and Wellington would proceed back to the fleet aboard the bats and tell them to proceed at top speed. After a day of cooling the Slime in the reactor core could be safely bluelined again.
Datura and Jack ran into the village's little mud brick chapel and found a pair of scribes tallying up yields on wax tablets. Jack flashed his Holy Symbol and Datura rang the church bell to sound the alarm. The Gnome Rostov, a low level Grain Cleric who ministered to the village, was first to arrive in response. Jack had nothing but awful experiences with Gnomes. His ingrained prejudices were challenged when Rostov quickly organized the evacuation of his flock. The homesteaders wanted to herd their animals and the Gamblers wanted to annihilate them so the Giants couldn't eat them, but Rostov prioritized the evacuation. Beasts could be replaced but souls belonged to the Goddess and were not interchangeable. The adventurers had to settle for burning as many houses as Datura could reach with her Boots of Speed. They carried children and old people out of the line of fire and by the time the Giants pulled up in their mobile temple, the villagers were already a league away to the east.
Datura gave Jack her Boots of Speed. He slipped on his Ring of Invisibility and went to rob the temple. He climbed up one of the statues to get onto the roof and the stone woman swatted him with her falcata. She stepped out from under the building, causing it to sag. The Dwarf priest in charge of the sanctuary came out and asked her what happened. She signed that she felt something touch her and attacked it. The Dwarf went inside and gave an order to the Bronze statues that stood guard around the Paladium. They locked shields and blocked the entrance. On the roof, Jack looked down through the window under the gable. Treasure was heaped at the base of the cult statue. He recognized the sooty wooden figure as Quickness. She was the Ancient Empire's Goddess of military strategy, law and civilization, but her favorite culture heroes were usually rogues who won by stealth and deception rather than strength and honorable combat. Jack understood why the priest allowed Aldrich the use of his mobile shrine as a vessel, and hoped the Goddess wouldn't object to him looting her treasury. He climbed down and began pilfering treasure from the pile. A robe of Endure Elements. A mysterious wand. A couple diamonds.
Outside, the Storm Giant picked up one of the Ogre Landsknechts and held him high in the air. The Ogre reported that the refugees from the village were a league to the east, and further still he could see a column of steam above the river. Aldrich swore, taking the names of Bloodfeast and Quickness and the God King in vain. He ordered his goons back to the ship. They needed to leave before whoever was pursuing caught up with them. Datura needed to give Jack more time. She peered out of the irrigation ditch and fired a single thundering round from her rifle. It caught one of the Ogres in his powder flask and set him on fire. The other soldiers dropped prone and thumbed back the locks on their muskets. The Frost Giant tried to put out the burning Ogre but accidentally squashed him. The Demicyclopses shouted at the grunts to get back to the ship. It was just one damn sniper trying to hold them up, they couldn't get tarpitted here. Aldrich spotted the cloud of black powder smoke over the ditch, but the Cloud Giantess cloaked him in obscuring mist before he could point it out to the troops.
Datura's delaying tactics bought Jack just enough time to climb out of the temple as it filled up with soldiers and Giants. They realized someone was invisible and walking among them as he squeezed out the window, prompting a volley of gunfire and Giants thrashing around. He dropped a squash headed grenade into the room, blowing a hole in the tile floor, and jumped off the roof before any of the Giants climbing aboard could swipe him. He rolled and hit the ground running. The stone building stood and walked south, across the river and onto the rolling dunes of the Plain.
Roddy and Wellington landed aboard the Last Round and told them to hit
the gas. The crew bluelined the reactor, Alice distributed stims to the
warriors on the Bottle Full of Rain and they rowed after. Datura and Jack went east after the refugees and regrouped with the fleet. They opened their map and planned out their next move. By this point Aldrich was only a league to the south, but if they pursued him they couldn't bring the ship and its firepower to bear in the desert. They could outrun him on the giant bats, but they could only bring a strike force of five people. The walking temple wasn't fast but it had endurance on its side. It could keep moving day and night and ignore the undead infesting the plain, while the pursuers would have to rest and find shelter from the monsters. Referencing the map, the Gnome Rostov suggested that Aldrich had come downriver because his forces needed food. It wasn't on the way to the shield volcano where he was headed, he needed a village of people and animals to feed his Giants.
Aldrich's current course, if he continued south, would take him to the Marsh on Mogart's Creek. That was the only patch of green on the map before the barrier cliffs that marked the transition to the High Plain. If he was struggling to feed the Giants, he'd have to stop there before continuing south. Even at top speed, there was no way the boats could reach the Marsh before Aldrich. But the bats could. The plan was simple: the Gamblers would fly south to the Marsh and scorch the earth, leaving nothing for Aldrich and his goons to eat. The rest of the fleet would follow along the river.
The Elves had a problem with the plan. Or rather their living ship did. Ollerganzu didn't want to swim around with Humans and Gnome and Hogs. Their enemies were only a league south and he wanted to chase them. This was a stupid idea, with their forces divided the fleet would be much weaker in a straight fight. The tree would not be dissuaded. They had lived a thousand years and didn't need to live a thousand years more. They needed to smash evil. The Gamblers relented and gave the Elves a Scarecrow as defense against the Storm Giant's lightning toss power. This pissed off Alice, but so did everything else they did. The Elves tied down all their loose objects and hung on as the tree rose out of the water and strode onto land in the form of a mighty Treant. South into the desert.
Braun
The Gamblers mounted their Giant Bats and flew south over the Plain. They flew high and stayed out of lightning range of the Giants. At twilight the bats announced to Jack that there was a scary smell. Like thunder. The Blue Dragon Baradye flew past without noticing them, circling lazily and descending north toward the Giants and the pursuing Treant. The Gamblers flew on, not waiting to see what happened but attentive to the flash of lightning on the horizon that never came.
It was night when they reached the Marsh on Mogart's Creek. Smaragdino told them back at the Grange bank that a company of mercenaries had been sent by the Brilg and Spowegg Concern to clear out some monsters and open the creek up for travel. On one side of the marsh was a mastaba and a petrified forest. On the other was a stand of living trees, a tomb cut out of a hill and an ancient fort. There was a fire lit in the ancient fort. The remaining walls and the raised foundations kept the undead swarming outside from getting in. The bats circled overhead and a chattering sound came out of the camp as the inhabitants sprang to life. Roddy recognized them by their cries as Hsigo, flying monkeys. Their monkey sergeants bawled orders to grab weapons and scramble a defense against aerial attack. Jack called out that they were friendly and the primates invited them to land.
The Hsigo leader Ehrman laughed at the Gamblers. They were surrounded by fifty of his best men and had better explain themselves without making any sudden moves. The Gamblers told the Flying Men (which was the name of their mercenary army) that a force of Giants was on its way to eat everything that couldn't escape their clutches. The monkeys chattered excitedly and the sergeants clouted them into silence. Ehrman had problems of his own and wasn't going to be distracted by some cock and bull story about Giants and Human Giants and Bronze Men and Rock Women. He had a contract to clear out the monsters in the Marsh but was having a devil of a time. Roddy asked what kind of creatures were there. The Hsigo described horrible bark paper things that flew through the air and suffocated their victims. There were hundreds of the damn things.
Roddy identified the monsters by description as Whipwhirls, elemental spirits from the Plain of Wood. They could be slaughtered en masse with fire weapons but he didn't have a lot of oil to spare. He could make something with what he had on the ship, but that was a day's flight to the north and they were running out of time as it was. The Hsigo told him there the rock tomb was full of bats, and that meant guano which an alchemist could use to make explosives. The flying foxes told Jack they didn't smell any bats in the area. Whatever was in the tomb, it was something else. But if it shit, they could kill it.
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