Into The Odd: Clerics of the Carmine Dawn

 

The Brilg and Spowegg expedition to Hogman's Plain was going great. The desert was lethally hot by day and infested with undead by night, but the gunboat cared not for either as it motored up the River Hog. When the sun rose over the mountains and stayed trapped there for sixteen hours, bathing the desert in perpetual dawn light, Captain Yarrow of the Rent Seeker wasn't fazed. He sent four of his handpicked explorers ashore to investigate the tower on the horizon, in case there was some connection to the otherworldly weather.

• Dimitri the Aleman and his Mule
• Skar Disanto, Disgraced Detective
• Cassie "Castle", Ax Woman
• Barb the Barbarian, from the lands outside Bastion

It was a bit of a hike to the tower. The sun didn't go anywhere. 

 

 The tower was fifty feet high and made of metal that was once painted but had faded and chipped away. It was tilted to one side and full of holes. The sounds of battle rang out from the windows. There was a little tower at the base, a two story adobe structure with a staircase leading to a door in the side of the tower. Barb peered through his spyglass and saw that the tower was occupied by a party of Dawnlanders, paleolithic inhabitants of the Plain. So called because they moved only by dawn and dusk.

  

 

 

Dimitri shouted a greeting at a respectable distance. One of the cavemen fired a flint arrow at him. He continued shouting and the Dawnlanders told him to go away. This tower belonged to the Carmine Dawn and Nightlanders weren't allowed. Further dialogue proved fruitless. One of the cavemen ran up the staircase and went into the big tower. The mule ate a fistful of gravel from the desert floor. 

 

The explorers charted a path around the side of the structure so the big tower screened them from the arrow loops of the squat adobe structure. The Clerics' tower had no openings at ground level. Barb climbed up to the next level, toward a window full to burst with plant life. A man clad in a chokha and ruby red pin poked his head out the fourth story window. He saw Barb climbing and called down a giant scorpion from the top level of the tower. The enormous chelicerate ran down the side of the building. Barb barely made it through the window, where the monster couldn't follow. Still outside, Dimitri called up to the man in the window. The guy wrapped a lanyard around his wrist so he could safely dangle a pink lantern out the window. He told the Aleman to stay still as the lamp glowed brighter and brighter. A ruby pink beam shot out from the lamp and disintegrated Dimitri, leaving only his arcane winter scythe intact. The mule licked up his ashes while Skar and Castle moved around the side of the tower to break line of sight.

 

Father Mustard, Cleric of Flesh, freshly exiled from the Rent Seeker to "assist" the other four adventurers,  approached the tower and was immediately accosted by a party of Dawnlanders emerging from the adobe. The cavemen showered him and the other explorers with projectiles. Skar held the mule steady while the Castle and Mustard climbed onto its saddle and into the second level of the tower. The tribals downed Skar with a flint arrow and set upon the mule. The beast kicked one of them into unconsciousness, chasing off two of them and leaving a single caveman to dispatch the monster. He killed the mule but was himself felled by pistol fire from the adventurers in the window above. The two surviving Dawnlanders rushed out to recover their downed allies. Afraid they would finish off the incapacitated detective, Castle used her magic seal to teleport the wounded Skar into the garden. 

 

The garden was full of hanging plants. There was a ceiling hatch accessible via a trellis where the sounds of battle could be heard, and a hole in the floor that smelled like mulch. An enormous creature of ferns and flowers slithered through the undergrowth, planting bulbs and stitching together rubbery tubes of sugar water to feed the greenery. It ignored the adventurers and they climbed the trellis to peer into the room above. The room was lit only by white orbs which extended from the floor on metal stalks. The ceiling was lined with storage racks. The room was divided from its counterpart on the other side of the tower by an interior wall. A hole in the ceiling led up to the floor above. A woman clad in the same coat and pin as the lantern shooter sparred with a pair of armored guards wielding halberds. Her sword pulsed with energy and she shouted at the men to take this seriously, she was getting bored. 

 

Castle used her sigil to create a portal in the room above the fight. She could only see the ceiling of the chamber above and found herself looking down through the portal at the man with the lantern while he argued with a big glowing upside down face. Mustard shot through the portal with his pistol and the rest of the explorers leaped through and fell on top of the Cleric of the Carmine Dawn, cutting him down. Castle passing through the portal closed it, trapping Mustard in the garden. He peeled a vine off the trellis to use as a rope and the Caretaker flared its ruff of flowers. He used his flesh book to speak with the creature and it plucked the creeper out of his hands instead of killing him, carefully pasting it back onto the climbing frame. He asked the monster how to get to the top of the tower and it shrugged. It had never left the room. A trio of mutants crawled out of the hole in the floor. They apologized to Mustard and brandished their weapons, more afraid of the Clerics than him.

 

Upstairs, the giant upside down head flickered and shouted commands at the explorers, cycling through a list endlessly. When it told them not to move, they couldn't move. In a moment of free movement they stole the Cleric's lantern and threw him out the window, ignoring his warning that they were going to destroy the whole world if they persisted. He died when he hit the ground and the lantern pulsed with light. It grew brighter and brighter. Skar grabbed it and shoved it through the hole in the floor. It exploded and blinded him and the woman on the level below, who had realized something was up when she heard the commotion. Her two bodyguards hustled her out of the room, but turned to face Mustard as he ascended the trellis ahead of the mutants. Cornered by monstermen and armed goons, Mustard braced for an awful beating, but found himself flat on his back in the room above thanks to Castle's quick use of her portal sigil.

 

The stairs to the next floor were upside down, forcing the explorers to awkwardly climb up the underside like a ramp and then swing around to get through the opening in the ceiling. Their progress was further slowed by the jabbering of the talking head, which intermittently paralyzed them. Barb stuck his head up into the room at the top of the tower. A lightless black orb hung in a metal cradle from the ceiling. A hydrocephalic dwarf stood guard over a device made of rods and mirrors which focused the image of the orb on the red sun hanging over the mountains on the horizon. The dwarf told Barb to leave. Barb said no, I'm going to stop you. The little guy's head pulsed. Barb felt a sense of overwhelming dread, a full body heat pulse. The scorpion scuttled in through the opening in the wall. Down below, the interior door swung open. The remaining adventurers, perched awkwardly on the staircase, faced down the two halbardiers, the mutants, and another Cleric with a two handed sword and overly ostentatious gauntlet. At that moment, battle was joined.

 

Mustard threw his acid flask into the door. The halbardier stepped through the door, allowing his armor and skin to burn, but the rest of the attackers held back. The others awkwardly climbed to the next level, thankfully not impeded by the head commanding them not to cast spells. Barb knocked out the psychic dwarf with a club to the head. Skar rushed in waving his weapon and, still blind, ran directly into the black orb and was devoured. Castle tried to teleport the scorpion into the orb but it clung to the metal cage surrounding the death ball. It stung Barb, who tanked the damage and finished off the downed psychic. The orb pulsed ominously, straining the confines of the metal arm holding it. The scorpion attacked Castle and snatched him up in its claws. The orb grew in size, no longer held in place by the psychic's power.  Down below the Halbardier jabbed Mustard with his spiked polearm. It crackled with electricity and scrambled his nervous system, dropping him to the floor. The Cleric with the sword picked his way around the acid pool and rushed forward up the upside down staircase. 

 

The orb broke its cage and filled the room, eating the body of the psychic. Barb crushed his enchanted rose to boost his odds of escape, but was swallowed up by the sphere. The scorpion got away, scuttling out the window with Castle in its claw. The Cleric stuck his head up through the floor hatch at the top of the stairs and apprehended what was going on, just in time to swear in distress before being devoured.

 

The third and final party of explorers from the Rent Seeker saw the black sphere expand and disappear. As the sun resumed its normal transit across the sky, the light of day fell on the enormous crater where the tower once stood.  A scorpion scuttled across the desert, the crepuscular arachnid looking for a hiding spot to devour the meal caught in its claws. The adventurers recognized the trapped victim as one of their shipmates and gave chase. Unconcerned by these antics, Dimitri's mule bent to the floor of the crater and licked up the radioactive ashes.