shifty louts

Antarctica Campaign Session 5 - Heriotza the Necropolis Pt. 2

Players

Summary

So we find ourselves at the last chapter of our ongoing GM-round robin Antarctica Game of Games

The group’s camp has been set outside the domed ruined walls themselves. The dread ceramic fortress that surveys the landscape hovers above a river. Below it, a herd of elasmotherium grazes upon the river banks, and the castle floats above.

After the deaths of Txori van Lotus and Ganix Deg within the bowels of Heriotza, the Green Magus Xarles Marato and Xarles Puro spend the last of their coin hiring some shifty louts (two porters, five light footmen, and two heavy footmen) to accompany them back into the ruined Necropolis.

After scouring the ruins of the humid, stinking fen of the blasted city, the party comes upon a landscape of thorns, obsidian spires some 70’ feet tall, built upon 12’ walls of black slab.

thorns Image courtesy of Idraluna

One of the hirelings identifies a Rosetta Stone of writings. Strange arborescent script of Heriotza, the diagonal runes of High Montane, and the Cyrillic-like alphabet of Free City Kriol, so identified by the Green Magus who translates them thusly

This place is not a place of honor.

No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Nothing valued is here.

This place is a message and part of a system of messages.

Pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us.

We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture

The Green Magus thinks it is a trick, a clear perfidious example of reverse psychology to convince would-be tomb robbers that nothing of value is held here. The group continues, eventually finding through the rubble-lined streets a sinkhole with a metallic tube that has a hole in it.

Water can be heard rushing through it. The sinkhole drops some 60’ downward. Xarles Puro offers to descend into the tunnel first after tying the rope to a fallen marble column.

As the Armsman descends, he finds that the water rests above the knees and the tunnel smells like a latrine. The floor had long crumbled in places. A passage eastward continues as water rushes in that direction.

Ribbons of mold cloy along the room's walls. Bits of once beautiful sandalwood furniture now rest like islands upon the water. The Magus identifies the mold as some sort of liverwort (non-poisonous), but beyond his herbology of the Shrublands. It must be taken to a herbwoman for proper identification.

The group heads northwards, surprised as a piece of flotsam turns out to be a 14’ giant crocodile who lashes at both the Magus and Armsman but quickly swims further eastward away from them. The Green Magus animalistic charms only received further sibilant hisses from the sewer crocodile.

The group continues northward, finding that the water slowly drains away as they enter a damp room of water shin-high. The smell is like that concealed, thick piss and the brine of the ocean. An old cistern sits in the middle of the room. Sloshing can be heard coming from within the cistern.

The group peers into the cistern to see an oily film sitting upon the water’s surface. A partially liquefied corpse of a crocodile floats in pieces, and within the water, shimmering silver pieces can be seen. Luckily, a porter assists Xarles the Magus’s investigation, as the cistern only descends 20’ downward.

Xarles skims the water with his finger tips, only to find them burning. White-hot searing pain as suddenly his hand is consumed, and the shock kills the Magus, the oily film continues to consume and burn through the body of the former Magus.

The Armsman Xarles recoils in horror, and they run towards the leftward staircase. A crumbling set of marble stairs. Piles of moldering clothes. A long, dried film cakes the rotten clothes. only to find that it exits the bowels below the ruined city.

Here, two more adventurers are found, both daring Armsmen, Josu Allorca and Makatza Esgrima.

The group reconvenes and plunges headfirst back into the dungeon, taking what’s left of the Magus’s items.

Within the cistern room, they head westward, then sharply north for some time, eventually finding an armory of some sort. Large collections of light-weight vests, truncheons, as well as firearms protected by a lock that features hexagramic symbols.

After some attempts to figure out the lock, Makatza breaks down the metallic door with a loud boom.

The group investigates the arms, finding the armor to be as strong as plate, but light as leather. The truncheons have some sort of button that allows them to crackle with electricity, while the rifles emit a searing hot violet beam of energy.

PLASMA

While this occurs, the group notices that the ambient temperature seems hotter, the smell of ozone stronger, and the muffled cries of humans screaming amidst more frog-like croaking can be heard down the eastern hallway.

Using the southern wall for concealment, Xarles the Armsman can see a gruesome sight in the eastern room.

Three of the 7' hairless milk-skinned humanoids are hunched over a bound figure, a Black Magi by the looks of his ritual scarification and branding.

The Black Magus’s chest cavity has been pried open with a ferro-fluid like speculum. His heart was pumping, and his lungs still expanding. He screams as two of the figures seem to prod long metallic instruments into his chest.

Upon his head, some electric crown, wires running to box shape that is on the ground.

Amongst the discarded black kanzu and fez of the Black Magus, silver coins lie scattered on the floor.

VIATORS

Another four are experimenting on a zombie, flaying it open and examining its nervous system as its teeth snap at the empty air. Both groups croak furtively while two factotums record their dictation with a metallic pad.

Urging caution, the group proceeds back to the armory and heads southward and then into a western passage where they hear more warbling croaking that is rising and falling urgently. The creatures have pushed the room furniture to one side, seemingly having no use for it.

Another northern passage is quickly taken, and the ground finds wet humanoid footprints that continue into another armory. It seems a large group of footprints, collections of them close to various firearm lockers, untouched.

The footprints continue southward past a door, which Josu breaks open and enters a narrowing passageway that spills out into a workshop. It is filled with old tables. Large rat droppings, too. Dusty metallic wands hang on the wall. Xarles Puro, the Armsman, takes one for further study.

REMOTE

The group saw a large table in the south-eastern corner of the room, and underneath it, a nest had been made. A family of four giant rats is asleep, dreaming. Within their nest of detritus and wood shavings are silver coins.

The group discusses whether to kill the rats; debates about plague are considered before the group leaves the sleeping family of rats to dream pleasantly.

The group enters another eastern passage and finds themselves surprised as a form comprised of eleven hendecagonal stone plates spills forth from the wall and charges forth, busting through the front line of heavy footmen who are crushed to pulp beneath the wide, flat stone plates. Xarles Puro can escape, but just barely!

The group quickly turns tail and can outpace the creature, finding it merging back with the wall as they find that the passage they took sharply turns eastward and eventually spills back into the cistern room with the still smoldering body of Xarles Marato, the Green Magus.

The group exfils from the Domed City back to camp to lick their wounds.

Level 1 of Heriotza the Necropolis

TLDRAW

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes