Riverboat Gambler Session Twelve

Diefenbach

On one side of the flooded room

• Roddy Applecreek
• Datura the Elf, still giant from the Potion of Growth
• Jack Fatherd
• Alice Woodfingers the Mower and her two Grain Clerics
• A reduced force of Hsigo
• A Shambling Mound made of ANFO
• Five Giant Bats and six Giant Woodpeckers to carry them 

On the other side

• Baradye the Blue Dragon
• Aldrich Deathdragon, transformed into a smaller Blue Dragon
• Poliouchos the Dwarf, Holy Slave of Quickness
• A Disciple of Zezyan
• 28 desert warriors pledged to the Disciple

 

At the heart of it all, the Star Spawn.

The battle was fast and brutal. The freshly roused Star Spawn sent a pulse of psychic energy that stunned everyone around it. The Gamblers, the Mowers and Poliouchos spent down their reserves of Godly power just to keep everybody in the fight. Datura fired her Wand of Death at Aldrich. The Dwarf Cleric of Quickness expended the last of the Goddess' blessing to protect her favored champion.

I have made a solemn vow to you, O Goddess
Kill the enemies of your servant.
Kill them at the first opportunity
Kill them in the most favorable manner

said he, the prayer familiar after hundreds of years.

Aldrich could have escaped. There was no way the Gamblers could have caught him on the wing and they would have had their hands full with the Star Spawn. He could even have gone around the other side and cut off their retreat so they died. He saw Jack Fatherd, the guy who killed his wife, and breathed lightning on him. Jack survived. His bat died instantly. The Cleric fell into the water. He hit it hard and sank down eleven feet where an Otyugh grappled his unconscious form. It caressed his face with its tendrils and only his helm prevented the hook from piercing his brain through the eye socket.

Trampier

 

The Desert Dwellers were stunned into quiescence by the Star Spawn's psychic shout. The handful who kept their wits attacked the Star Spawn with flaming swords. Roddy shouted a command to the Giant Bat carrying the fertilizer mound. The flying fox dropped the ANFO golem on the Star Spawn and Aldrich's clustered forces. The Grain Cult's chemical explosive experiment exploded and pulped the tribesmen, the Zezyan and the Dwarf. Aldrich lost his bronze claw, a gift from the Lord Bloodfeast, to the explosion. Roddy followed up with a jar of hellslime, taken from the Barbican of the Blaster Caster and finally unleashed. It hit Aldrich in the torso and dissolved the bones of his ribcage. The Dragon man fell into the water.

The Star Spawn blinked both eyes. For such a being thought and action were identical. It thought about the taste of the dragon's intestines and a double handful of Aldrich's guts filled its hands and then the beard of tentacles around its beak. Baradye had planned to recover her business partner, transformed into a Blue Dragon so she could stand to look at him. With his death she had no reason to stay and flew down the flooded corridor away from the fight.

The pair of Grain Clerics dove into the water to get the Otyugh off Jack before it ate him. The garbage squid ate them instead. Alice spent the last of her Godly power to stop Jack from dying and flew into the Star Spawn with her Flail of Flowers whirring. The beast's psychic wave blasted her mind but couldn't stop the giant woodpecker beneath her from attacking it. Giant Datura lifted Jack out of the water and placed him on a shelf by the chamber wall, where he fumbled a healing potion into his mouth. Roddy and the Hsigo pelted the Star Spawn with grenades, wounding Alice and the woodpecker. The Star Spawn ate Mower and Flicker both. Datura brandished the Wand of Death but the Star Spawn shrugged off the lethal spell and leaped across the room to pulverize five Hsigo with the sonic boom it made as it hit the ceiling. Datura sloshed across the room and grabbed Aldrich's body, transformed back into a human by his death.

With receipt in hand, it was time to leave. The Star Spawn was too quick for the Gamblers, even mounted atop their flying animals. Datura lagged behind and would have been the monster's meal were it not for the Hsigo.

Come on you apes, do you want to live forever?
 

asked the Sergeant. With eight of the flying monkeys he died covering the Gamblers' retreat out of the cave.

The final death toll for the operation was three Mowers, nineteen Hsigo, a Giant Woodpecker and a Giant Bat. The Gamblers escaped the Lair of the Star Spawn and found the monkeys guarding the surface entrance in disarray. Erhman regretted to inform them that they couldn't stop the egress of Baradye the Blue, who flew off before they could put more than a volley of missile weapons into her. Roddy used the demolitions charge he prepared at the very beginning of the adventurer, carried by the last Giant Bat, to collapse the adobe tower on top of the dungeon entrance before the Star Spawn could chase them out. Datura paid a prize of silver to the Flying Men for the gallant sacrifice of their comrades, above and beyond what was stipulated in the contract.

 

Jack stood in the roundhouse with his loaf of round bread and stared at the scoreboard. The Goddess was there but said nothing. The Liberator never shut the fuck up, Leper Heart and Tower of Pain talked to him whenever he was injured, but the Goddess had not said a word while he fought alongside Her soldiers and led them to their deaths in a pit so they could hunt down and kill the man who had sinned against Her creation. There had to be some way to get through to Her. To hear Her word. 

Roddy dreamed of the Great Moon on the night of his covert operation to destroy the Giantess' spell printer. It was Moonshades smiling on his favorite children, although the light made sneaking around difficult. The moon grew larger until its light swallowed the night. Not the moon but a star. It should have been too bright to see. A large fireball.

YOU BURNED THEM

The Great Lord of Embers said to his disciple. Roddy agreed this was so.

BURN THEM ALL
 

said the God of moral courage and revolutionaries and of destruction.

Datura couldn't remember her dreams. She woke up to a ringing in one ear, like the echo of a hammer. She asked Jack about his religious beliefs. He couldn't explain it. They prepared to leave at dawn. A tiny tamarisk sprouted in the ruins of the tower. It bore two pink flowers and its branches formed the shape of a tiny wooden hand.

The Hsigo called out the approach of a monster. A lone Mantis with a shell that shined in very color of the rainbow. Colored Shell stopped and stood motionless when she saw the pile of rubble where the adobe watchtower used to be. She asked the Gamblers, in handcommon, where the mantises went. The Gamblers explained that they were all dead, killed by the King of Giants or by the squid. Colored Shell asked what idiot woke the big fish up. She tossed an ornate trident in the sand. Jack gave her his Starhelm Amulet in return.

 

They went north on their flying mounts and passed high over a convoy of rangers headed in the opposite direction. Cortez' Rangers, clad in cloaks of lizard skin and mounted on camels, carrying rifles. Roddy hoped that the image of a squid the Gamblers carved on one of the bricks of the destroyed tower would serve as adequate warning not to go inside the dungeon. He didn't hope that hard.

With time to spare before reconvening at the Last Round and returning Aldrich's corpse to civilization for bounty payment, the Gamblers and their primate escort flew east to investigate the strange structure. It was a dome covered with writing that shimmered in the heat haze. When they got close enough to read it Jack realized that the Gamblers had far outdistanced the apes. He looked behind him and saw three of the Hsigo frantically trying to restore the troop to its senses as they gazed at the dome. He looked to his left and right and found that his comrades were likewise ensorceled. The Bats and Woodpeckers couldn't read and were immune to the trap. They carried the Gamblers down to the dome, Jack looking at the ground to avoid being caught by the trap.

 

Boullée

 

The cursed letters were writ atop a dome atop columns, red stone clad in shining white. Beneath the columns was a large basin, filled mostly with sand. A statue of a vinegaroon woman spitting acid stood half buried in the dry fountain. Roddy and Datura stared up at the words on the dome while Jack went inside to look for treasure. He realized that leaving his friends outside was a bad idea and turned to see a cobra bite Datura on the ankle. Fortunately the poison didn't take and the Giant Woodpeckers enthusiastically dismembered the serpent before pecking the ground in search of more. Jack tried divine power to end the ensorcelment, then freed the Elf from the hypnotic pattern by simple expedient of blocking her line of sight to the dome. Datura freed Roddy from the possession effect and went back to help the monkeys. Jack found coins, an enchanted kopesh and a magical kilt in the dry pool.

 

A lone rider cantered out of the wasteland toward the dome. It was a camel with a camouflage blanket to match the lizard skin cloak draped over the rider. He carried a rifle in a bucket scabbard on his saddle and stared at the dome, uncaring of where his mount went. Roddy carefully disarmed him and swung himself up onto the beast, skillfully avoiding its ire. He blocked the rider's line of sight so he regained his faculties. The man at first thought he was being held hostage, disarmed and in a strange place. Roddy reassured him that he was safe, for the moment. 

 

The man was Abydos the Half Orc, a member of Cortez' Rangers. He was on his way to the Shield Volcano with the rest of the gang to loot the tomb where Aldrich Deathsbane had gone. He saw a strange light on the horizon and next thing he knew he was here. Roddy thought about warning him of the Star Spawn and the other horrors of the flooded tomb. He settled for just telling the guy where the dungeon was and approximately where he last saw the rest of the Rangers. Abydos thanked him and assured the Halfling that he could expect friendly treatment from the normally violent gang if he mentioned his name.

Abydos left and Datura returned with the Hsigo troop, flying face down. The monkeys debated how to neutralize the writing on the building. The consensus among the enlisted primates was to smear it with feces. Erhman rejected this, he was trying to show the world that the Flying Men were a first rate mercenary army and not a zoo exhibit. Jack had a diamond bitted drilling wand stolen from Aldrich's floating house, which could deface the stone letters without collapsing the dome. That way they could rest atop the structure overnight, safe from undead, and return to the Last Round the next day. 

And that's how it would have happened. But I'm telling the story, and I want it to end with a bang. So Roddy used his two squash head grenades and blew the whole thing up.