Riverboat Gambler: Hunter and Hunted

Djemaleddin held his mug hard enough to dent the metal. The bar didn't use horn or wood because it splintered too easily in the clenched fists of overpowered adventurers, but the metal mugs had to be light and cheap so they still crumpled. He was nervous because there was too much clang in the room. Too much power in the opposing force. Fighting men at the bar counter with dates and parties and crowds on their hips. If the sorceress at the riverside window started casting the whole room was within her area of effect. He could make it to the door before the cloud swallowed him but that would mean fighting his way past the group of Sugarmen hauling the idol up to the trade booth. He had to hit first, it was the only way. Get close so she couldn't zap him without catching herself in the blast. Put out damage, force her back. Her comrades would rush him but then she wouldn't FF them, and he could handle them until- 

 

Gordy arrived with the refill. Gordastasia Greengloves, whose green gloves never came off even when she was naked. She put a green-gloved hand on his shoulder from behind and he sank into his seat with an instant scruffed-kitten reaction. Gordy was here. The only "encounter" was with the tray of river fritters and hippo steak and pickles and sweet pink guavarrack and beer so light and crisp and cold you could bathe in it. If he fell before the death spell or the plus ones and twos and threes of the bunched dunecrawlers, she'd catch him.

 

Riverboat Gambler: The Dent in the Shield

Stomp your foot
Flick your sword

Across the body

Of the fat

Thing from the

Jar and toss

With the same 

Motion your shining

Sword to the 

Man waiting to

Catch it so

The blade is

Not lost as

The pincers close

Around your head

You are not

The dancer you

Are the dance 

So if you

Miss one step

The part that

Matters will 

survive

 

Riverboat Gambler: Three More Tombs

David Roberts

 

The enormous statue had once stood over the river but the river had meandered in the ages since it was erected. The sages at first believed the features had been scraped away. A supernatural confirmation kill in one of the dynastic struggles on the ancient Plain. But it had simply been sculpted like that. Faceless except the open mouth. Without eyes and ears and nose the expression was unreadable despite the carefully sculpted teeth and tongue. It communicated fear or laughter or pain or hunger as the viewer wished. 

 

The engineers clustered around the statue at the neck and prepared to blow it up. The Bronze Head was going to open a new restaurant in Hylem-Xylem, which everyone just called Sugar City now that the rhyming slang of the chaotic argot was out of favor again. They couldn't find another bronze head, or they just didn't believe in doing the same thing over and over again.

  

Gorgojo had never been to Last Autumn. He had the architectural drawings. The sketches of the streetscape and planned exterior facade and interior decor. He knew how much space he had to work with and the maximum weight the structure would support. But he had no real sense of the place to which he would take his prize. He was from the pampa, the sea of grass where a single tree was a sight to behold. A city rising out of an ocean of trees shaded red and purple and yellow and orange sounded like something out of a dream.  

 

The charges would break the head free and the sorcerers would catch it with floating discs. They would bear it to the barge, and from there down the river where it joined with the river Hog. From there to the sea, and then back to the world. Once aboard the ship it was the responsibility of the captain. Gorgojo would, nonetheless, accompany it to its new home. He wanted to look up at it while he drank annix and ate purple worm in mole negro. Then look up further still at the trees.

 

The engineers verified, for a third time, that the charges had been set correctly. The mages promised, again, that they had triple checked the carvings at the base of the statue. Lorem ipsum. The same word repeated again and again without meaning. They had to move soon. The potions would wear off and they'd have to dip into the reserve during the trip back.

 

The heat haze made the tongue dance in the statue's mouth. Gorgojo thanked Logic and The Draftsman for checking his work and lit the fuse.

Riverboat Gambler: Three Tombs

Clearing a tomb of undead was routine. You approached by half light or by day and you used a weapon that burned everything inside. The average grave was no more than a few rooms deep. Enough flasks of alchemist fire generated convection sufficient to cook unliving flesh until it fell off the bone. Skeletons charred into heaps of cremains, wights came gibbering out the entrance to dissolve in the sunlight. Mummies made sounds like a man suffocating in a bag. The loss of scrolls and cloth and delicate artwork was regrettable. So was being chewed for an hour as the potion of troll blood surging through your veins kept you alive just long enough to feed the ghouls.

 

For living things it was the same. Set an ambush at the entrance, smoke them out and slaughter them. 

Tabor fondled his amulets and mouthed a prayer to the Hungry Dungeon before tossing the flask. Eda and Salvador had thrown theirs unlit, a "wet shot" to splash fuel into the corners before igniting. With the God propitiated, he threw.

 

A word came from the cave. He didn't understand it.

 

The burning oil went out. With it, the sun.

 

Eda kindled a Light spell but it would not spark. Without even the moons to light them the dunes looked like waves in some primal watery abyss, awaiting the creation of the world.

 

The sound came again. Tabor realized it was his name, spoken from the mouth of the tomb. 

Riverboat Gambler: Twelve Points of Interest

 

 

She stood at the helm of the riverboat and raced the pike-shaped congregation of egrets above as it flew across the Plain. The cold surged up from the swift water and dueled with the killer heat that scoured the land beyond the river of life. 

 

It passed over her and for a moment she was back.

 

On the lakeshore, one side of her shivering and one side warmed by the bonfire that ate the snow before it touched the beach. The Giantess' heavy body fit to burst out of the dozen animal skins she wore for her wedding, flushed red and blue. The Giantess surging down to embrace her new husband, then exploding when the rebels struck her with the death spell, splattering blood over the freshly crowned King of the Giants. The brawl that erupted in the stands as the Red Ball wizards raised their winestained fists and struck with their wands, battering the Giant clergy with magic missiles that smelled like juniper and blossoms of annix. The adventurers lashing out with poisoned bolts and bullets and strokes of their enchanted blades. The cake leaping in the air with the lifting charge and detonating at chest height to cut down pikemen and ogre doppelsoldner before they could reinforce their deceased mistress and her guests. The brave mage and his stone men who held the wedding ground against all comers until the red dragon incinerated the proceedings. The mage transformed into a red dragon himself in a gambit to escape the consuming flames, holding off the ancient worm in a desperate melee until it tore out his throat. 

 

She couldn't go back. Not to the path of agriculture and the social contract and duty to family and the Goddess. The path that led her family through the ovens and onto the Giantess' table. 

 

No. For her there was only the life of adventure. Men and monsters. Spells and magic swords. Step into the grave and catch the blade with your heart. Strike while your foe's weapon is immobilized and trust the Godman behind to heal you through the damage. Snap back from unconsciousness or from death and leap back into the fight to be struck down again. O Sun chased over the horizon by Great Moon, then chased by the sun, then the moon again.

 

The Halflings lying around on the deck were friends she met on the killing floor after the wedding. She had said nothing in the kitchen when the little alchemist had crawled out from under the cake, black with chocolate and coffee dust after planting the bounding mine inside. He held a gloved finger to his lips and replaced his beret and she let him leave without telling the guards, although another bomb would have meant complete extermination of all the slaves in the holding. For this they named her a Neighbor Man when they found her scavenging magic items on the beach. One of the good humans, who could be trusted to accompany them on adventures. Because for them, it was the same. Their village too had been fired and there could be no return to bass fishing and meat pies and blocks of cheese. The only holes in the earth they could now delve were tombs.

 

She gave a cry, because up ahead were the rapids. The rapids that ate the hulls of ships so the things that lived in the rocks could eat the crew. In an instant the hairy little gluttons came to life. They prepared to repel boarders and to guide the vessel through the cataract into the uncharted waters beyond. They yanked dust tarpaulins off the swivel guns. They pulled on their hoods of dark cloth, leaving only their grinning mouths exposed.

 

Riverboat Gambler: Settlement Gazetteer

I wrote a bunch of desert tombs full of monsters who prey on the colonists swarming across the narrow habitable band of Hogman's Plain. Here's a basic taxonomy of colonies for them to attack. We can combine them with the river generator from Magical Industrial Gunboats to create the map.

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Silent Swamp of the Stoneskin Jaeger

 

The Chocolate Coast at the edge of the Lost World. So called because of the vast quantities of chocolate which flow from Iron Cup’s inland plantations out to the trade fort at Isle of Sweat, and from there to the rest of the world. Further inland: Forest fens of giant cycads and ferns. Flooded pampas infested with enormous dinosaurs. Canyons filled with monstrous insects. Volcanoes that periodically disgorge great lava flows. Further still, the Gunpowder Empires of the Giff.

This is the context in which we place the Silent Ranch, a patch of swamp on a minor tributary of the River Sweat. Surrounded by prehistoric forests where hadrosaurs splash and giant sloths graze on primitive trees. Far away from sneering nobles and idiot wizards and trading companies and ravenous greed and murderous armies, for now. Nested atop a hideous secret that, if she’d known about it, the owner would have thought twice before locating her ranch there

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Kidnapper's Keep

With the collapse of the City of Tontes, the Marble Cliffs have become anarchic. Petty lordlings reassert their authority, controlling the surrounding landscape from fortified keeps. An entreprenurial gang of thieves operating out of a stolen castle run a kidnapping and ransom business, grabbing anyone who looks important and imprisoning them in the dungeons beneath the fortress.

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Atoll of the Shark God

A whirlpool has opened in the Atoll of Hanga, leading down to the legendary temple of the long-dead shark god. Treasure hunters salivate at the prospect of a drowned ruin to plunder. Religious authorities worry the great fish may have reawakened - a mindless hungry god that would make Mothermonster look like an HD 0 herd animal.

 

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Siege on the Chocolate Coast

Hawkins

 

In the suppurating jungles of the Lost World are a sea of cocoa plantations. The River Sweat connects those plantations to the Shallow Sea. The majority of the chocolate made in the world flows down that river, out to Isle of Sweat and from there to the world. Iron Cup taxes every boat that passes within shooting range of their coastal fort.

Seeing no reason to submit to the authority of a peasant trade guild, Count Zond Starshell digs a bypass canal to avoid the fort and undercut the Commonwealth merchants. Trade Warden Constantan Malachite objects to the presumptuous testudine's smuggling operation and leads a force of mercenaries against him.

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Prison of Dreams

AlexGraphex

 

The Old King once joked that he never dreamed the wild dreams of sleep, only the waking dreams of dominion. That was a lie. He dreamed like any other man. In one of his dreams he was a flying sphere covered with eyes, which hated all that saw and feared conspiracies. He dreamed it again, and again. Then the dream woke up, believing itself to be the real thing.

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: The Lost Vineyard

 

The Hot Lands. A field. Good soil, gentle hills overgrown with tangled and dried grapevines. In the center, the ruins of a villa and a farm. Built in the time of the Ancient Empire, briefly used as a convent after the original owners abandoned it. A thick tower, free standing and partially collapsed. On the other side of the ridge, a lake.

The wine grown in this estate was legendary. Conditions are still perfect for viticulture. People back home have an insatiable hunger for luxury goods from foreign lands. All you have to do is clean the place up and start growing.

Monster Overhaul Test Drive: Low Tide on the Spit

The Spit. An archipelago of subpolar islands, lightly forested. The handful of mountains are covered with snow, the lowlands and rocky beaches are lashed with wind and rain.

 

A once-in-a-decade low tide has pulled the water far back from shore, revealing hidden things.