Mayer
Jack Fatherd, Roddy Applecreek and Datura the Elf led a squad of Hsigo into the mastaba. They entered on the third level and took a spiral staircase down to the bottom floor, following the tracks left by the birds. The bottom floor landing had four stone doors, one in each direction.
- North, illustrated with images of crocodiles. The door was open, the tracks led through.
- West, illustrated with a man descending into a watery abyss
- South, illustrated with a sarcophagus
- East, illustrated with a baboon headed man and a beetle headed woman.
Datura followed the tracks into the north room. The seven surviving giant woodpeckers stood around a pool filled with sand. They gave warning cries. Datura shot one of the wounded birds and they attacked as a flock. The east door opened and a flood of animal mummies spilled out into the landing.
Mummified cats, crocodiles, beetles, baboons and mongooses flooded into the room. The Hsigo sergeant asked his apes if they wanted to live forever and flew into action, laying into the mongooses. The baboons shrieked, paralyzing Jack and a handful of monkeys with fear. Datura killed one bird but was wounded as four flickers pecked her simultaneously through the corridor. Roddy was bitten by a giant crocodile but picked out a higher value target in the backline: a mummified Jackal, sitting on a stone table observing the action from the room that emitted the other mummies. He shot at it with his sling but missed. The spark of the bullet drew the attention of the Hsigo, who set on the mummy and hacked it to pieces.
Something squirmed beneath the linen and bitumen smeared leather of the mummified skin. A man-sized figure uncurled from the dog's body and scuttled into the darkness. Roddy ran after it. Jack recovered from the paralysis effect but was mobbed by the baboons and beetles. The destruction of the jackal mummy caused the beasts to revert to their normal animal behavior rather than mount coordinated attacks, but even half the monsters were a match for the Gamblers in concert with the Giant Woodpeckers. Datura slammed the door shut in the stupid birds' faces. Roddy shoveled the Gnoll scrimshaw bone taken from the tomb under the Fazenda into his mouth and bit down. The vile magic hamstrung the fleeing figure, allowing him to catch up to the Skinwalker and club it to death. The crocodile mummy pursuing him chowed down on the body, breaking its own neck in an attempt to death roll so the head rotated independently of the body.
Jack turned undead and drove away the cats, beetles and mongeese. The baboons and remaining crocodile piled on damage and disabled his arm, dropping him to the floor. The Hsigo had been badly mauled by the animals, leaving only the sergeant and one grunt. They grabbed Jack and, wings beating, helped him up the stairs. The baboons pursued but Datura rushed up the stairs and knocked them back down. Roddy couldn't find any treasure on the dead Skinwalker, and realized he was alone in enemy territory. He ran for the entrance. The baboons and last crocodile chased him, forcing him to drop his last grenade behind him to escape. At the top level of the mastaba Datura readied her weapons to intercept the final crocodile as it came up the stairs after them. The Hsigo sergeant opened the west door as the mummy came up the stairs, incinerating it with sunlight and allowing them to claim the amulets tucked into its wrapping.
By the water's edge on the west side of the marsh, amid the burned trees, a squad of Hsigo chattered excitedly. The little green spirit who cursed Datura came out of the water waving a lillypad with a white flower, clutching her injured hand to her side. The apes brandished their swords but the squad lead restrained them. They weren't some damn troop of savages who would kill under a flag of truce. The Gamblers descended to hear what the sprite had to say.
Rackham
The Tiddy Mun told the Gamblers she would give them the treasure if they left her birds and her swamp alone. She wanted them to leave and if they did so the gold from the pyramid would be theirs. Jack explained that there was an army of Giants coming to eat everything in the swamp. The fairy said the Hsigo were already doing that. Datura brokered a deal. The Tiddy Mun would pay treasure and allow the Gamblers to ride the Giant Woodpeckers into battle. In exchange they would slay Aldrich and his Giant legions, and would convince the Hsigo to leave. This was easy enough. The Hsigo had a contract from the Brilg & Spowegg concern to render the monster infested swamp navigable. All they had to do was report back that they had slain the monsters but the river beyond was impassable and didn't lead to the high plain. That would discourage further exploration of the area.
The Tiddy Mun gave a high yarrup cry. The Flickers came limping out of the mastaba down to the water's edge. The birds bore injuries from their earlier air duel with the Gamblers. Some couldn't fly. Jack healed the animals with the power of the Gods. One of them held his dropped spear and shield in its beak, along with a couple scrolls and a black diamond from the pyramid's treasury. It tried to cram the objects down his throat, thinking he was a baby in need of feeding. There was only so much the Tiddy Mun could do to make the birds view the Gamblers as friendlies.
Roddy asked the Tiddy Mun if she knew anything about men who wore the skins of animals. She lied badly and said she had never heard of such a thing. He didn't press the issue.
The Hsigo started chattering again. The squad "guarding" the Tiddy Mun flew across the river to join their comrades at the fort, who scrambled to repel the latest intruder to the area of operations: the Cloud Giantess Jack saw fawning over Aldrich at the ranching village. She came stomping across the Plain out of the heat haze, making a beeline for the marsh. She was angry and her clothes were in disarray. The monkeys swarmed overhead and dropped darts and rocks on her. She summoned a cloud of mist to conceal herself, shouted, swatted at them and threw boulders at the little primates. She didn't need this right now. With the pests driven off to a safe distance she went to the edge of the marsh and cooled her feet.
Jack donned the ring of invisibility and approached the opposite shore of the marsh. The Giantess told him she could smell him, he was the same idiot who snuck into the temple back in the village. He asked her what happened. Why wasn't she with Aldrich and the other Giants? The Giantess Eusebia bitterly complained that Aldrich had transformed himself into a dragon and flown off with that WHORE Baradye the Blue. He took all the Ogres and the Dwarf priest and the treasure and left the Giants to fend off the advancing Elves after he and Baradye hit them with an entirely ineffectual strafing run. The Elves had used obscuring mist to screen their advance (a strategy with which she was familiar) and when they were close enough they hit the mobile temple with Stone to Mud, destroying it and rendering the iron soldiers inert. She left around that time, fed up with the whole situation.
Jack suggested a teamup, to hunt down and kill Aldrich and the homewrecking dragon. Eusebia crossed the swamp, which was only a few feet deep, and demanded he take the ring off. By this time the other Gamblers had emerged from the trees. Jack un-invisibled himself and the Giantess squealed. They were all so cute! Yes she'd work with them.
Datura went back to the fort to negotiate with the Hsigo leader. She sold him on the plan to complete the contract by lying to his superiors, then offered a new deal: the Gamblers would pay 5,000 silver pieces and the primates would accompany them onto the High Plain as scouts and skirmishers. Erhman agreed and money changed hands, adding a force of forty seven flying monkeys to the Gamblers' entourage.
The Last Round and the Bottle Full of Rain came up the river at dusk. Out of the desert to the north came another survivor: a lone Elf. He wore Giant jewelry and a scapular of Giant ears and dragged the sooty palladium from the temple of Quickness. Sumac the Elf told the Gamblers he was the only survivor of the fight on the Plain. The Giants were dead, the Elves and the living ship Ollerganzu perished in the brawl. Two other Elves escaped the massacre but were killed by a Troll as they marched across the Plain by twilight. He slew the Troll and alone survived.
Baxa
It was an impressive story, but Eusebia wasn't enthused. The little Elf had killed the other Giants and nearly killed her. If her thrown boulders didn't do the job her sandaled feet certainly would. He laughed and welcomed the violence. All his friends had died fighting Giants and now he would join them. The Gamblers made halfhearted attempts to head off the brawl. They weren't that attached to either party and both were loaded down with treasure. Eusebia kicked and swatted the Elf. He conjured a cloud of obscuring mist and dodged a couple strikes, lashing her legs with his shamshir. She caught him under her heel and ground him into the earth. One stomp broke his arm. The second annihilated him.
Roddy gave the order to fire. The Last Round's main gun and swivel guns coughed iron balls into the Cloud Giantess. She summoned a cloud of obscuring mist in time to escape most of the second volley. She threw a big piece of masonry from the fort at the boat, but missed. Luzia, the lone human among the Halflings, fired the killing shot and dropped Eusebia. Killing a Giantess who looked like Morwenna was nice, but poor recompense for the death of her entire family on Morwenna's table.
The Gamblers enthusiastically stripped both the Giantess and the Elf of their gems and jewelry. Datura noted that the Elf carried not only pieces of the Giants, but pieces of his Captain and the other nineteen Elves who had sailed with him on the living ship. He had undoubtedly eaten pieces of the bodies so he could carry his comrades with him until he too was struck down. Datura didn't believe in the Gods of the Men of the Forest but she sliced off a piece of poor Sumac all the same. Hardcore Elven revivalists believed that their ate the bodies raw, but there was no historical evidence of this. The Halflings wouldn't allow her aboard the Last Round with her cannibal meal. She used the fire kindled by the Hsigo in the fort to fry her strip of Elf bacon in a pan.
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