Session Season 6, Prax 15

1629, Dark Season, Stasis Week, Windsday. Storm Bull’s Holy Day

Dramatis Personae

Events

The troupe was split in two (plus Kolyey) when the human members began to hear a harp they all recognised as Jar-eel’s.

X1138 had a brief visual glitch, seeing a floor of marble, with etching and carving within, in a grand hall.  After recovering, he went to look for Repair Unit Maalira.

Varanis found herself near a river with Dezar, who was jumping and bouncing around her.  Dezar shouted enthusiastically about how she could fight the crocodile as Varanis saw what looked like Salt and Teeth, bathing.  She approached the crocodile, her furry paws sinking into sand and mud, to find that the crocodile had eyes like the Moon Rune.

Varanis told the crocodile, “You are not Salt and Teeth,” which gave her the chance to remember she was also Varanis.  She leant into being Yinkin,with her understanding of her role as a Wind Lord doing the steering.  She decided to pounce the evil chaos. ¹Uses jump to augment grapple and jumps on the croc.  The crocodile turned out to be rather larger than she thought, and she landed on its head.  It began to retreat into the water, and Yinkin clawed it hard, damaging an eye.  It thrashed about, and he jumped safely out of the way, but still landed in the water.  Swimming was hard and the water was wet.

Over by the Temple of Knowledge, Berra turned to Xenofos and warned him not to let Jar-eel make him do anything.  He pointed out that she was not, and she added ‘yet’ to his sentence.  Then she started to shimmer and look silvery, but while Xenofos could feel the Heroquest tugging at him, he did not find himself within it.  He undid the peace knots on his sword, checking out the street but finding that his eyes were drawn back to Berra.  He watched as she tried to walk away and bumped into a wall she could not see.  She spent a few moments calming herself, and then a third eye, as silver as the others, opened on her forehead.  It looked like she was using it to help her fumble half-blindly, and she then walked through a wall that was present in the Middle World.

Bolstering himself by thinking of her²Probably her, but it could have been Jar-eel, and Xenofos did not mention this out loud he managed to pull himself into the Godtime, walking with his eyes closed towards the wall, and finding that the world faded as he went into or through it.

He found himself by a river where there was a giant, apparently sleeping, crocodile  He did not spot the very slightly open eye with which she watched him.  Xenofos remembered the story of Salt & Teeth. The only time the crocodile was featured as this size was right before Yelmalio was eaten and killed her from within. He looked around for a honey badger, which was how Berra might be seen, and could not see her. He was still hearing the harp music, which was telling him about heroes looking after people, but he decided that his people were not in danger.  His understanding of the story of GoTaS was that the right thing to do would be to kill her, so that she could die and live again according to her cycle. He threw a rock at her to wake her and when she charged at him, he braced his spear and waited, aiming to jam her mouth open..

Maalira found herself looking at a giant crocodile whose eye had been clawed or gouged out. She asked if it needed healing, and it said yes in the most beautiful voice imaginable.  The eye, once healed, opened to reveal a moon rune. Then the crocodile launched at her. A couple of spears hit the crocodile, at the same time as a wolf bore Maalira over.  The crocodile landed partly on the wolf, and snapped and retreated to try again.  Then an angry mob attacked the crocodile and the wolf attacked the mob, getting its teeth bloody on those most likely to hurt or kill the crocodile.

X1138 had another visual glitch when he saw Maalira turning silvery and vanishing. He asked those in the room what had happened, and they called out in joy and praise to the gods, telling him about Maalira’s Heroquests, and a little about those of Varanis, who had also been there and vanished.  As well as he could translate, Maalira was partaking of some powerful matter that non-dwarfs ascribed to external personalities by the names of ‘gods’.  However, the fact remained that the repair unit was absent, and he could not confirm whether the previous vision glitch was explained by this powerful matter.  This was certainly a matter, he felt, for the mine manager.  As he thought that, he saw the hall once more, this time as if he were looking down at a patch of it.  Quicksilver was moving within elegantly-designed stone channels, and X1138 could see within the living liquid, which was absolutely impossible.  The vision-glitch ended with him leaking from the nose.

The dwarf asked the drinkers at Geo’s how to Heroquest (although he used the Dwarf terminology).  Several people left, but many others stayed, mostly Orlanthi.  They began to chant and dance, ushering him towards the centre of the room.  He could feel the hair standing up on his neck, which was very strange as he had not been previously aware that he had hair there.

Meanwhile, Varanis in the form of Yinkin was trying and failing to swim.  She sank below the water and nearly died, but struggled to the surface and caught hold of something that let her catch her breath.  As she pulled herself up with her handy claws, she found she was on a giant boat, with spear-carrying newtlings pointing weapons at her.  They were dressed in crocodilian armour.  Yinkin spoke charmingly, and persuaded them that there was a danger from the Red Moon, with a Lunar impostor trying to take on the power of Teeth and Salt.  After some discussion amongst themselves, many of the spear-carrying newtlings jumped overboard to search for the crocodile.  Yinkin was left behind, drying off.  The cat looked for things to pounce on, finding a duck who had wings instead of arms, but was entirely happy to talk about the cycle of egg-warming, and how ducks had a place in the cult of Teeth and Salt.  Varanis got her to wiggle her tail, and excitedly pounced on it.  She earned herself a feather and the ire of the newtlings, as well as the annoyance of the ducks.  However, she was still not attacked, merely watched carefully.

Xenofos braced his spear, hoping to catch the upper side of the jaw as the crocodile lunged, but somehow the animal twisted around him.  He was swallowed whole.  Within the darkness his spear lit up, in part because of his casting Lantern, and in part because it was Yelmalio’s spear.  He could see a weak spot where he could stab and likely kill the crocodile, unprotected by ribs or armoured back.  He put his spear down.

The harp music stopped, and the crocodile began to roll, moving the spear so that the point became stuck in the weak spot.  He managed to draw it out, despite the ongoing death roll, and realised that he had stability within it, somehow.  He managed to heal the wound despite the crocodile attempting to resist.

Maalira had a crocodile running at her. She was scuttling away, dodging and shouting for someone to stop that. The mob was trying to kill the crocodile, but a wolf was disturbing them, and apparently was the only one having a good time there – at least, the only one not somehow under attack.  However, as Maalira backed away from the crocodile, Berra ran for her, yelping and running away.  This simply confused Maalira; the wolf then sat down and beat its tail against the ground a couple of times, and moved away a little.  She followed it.  Behind them, the noise faded.  Maalira found herself fluttering around Berra the wolf, in the shape of a butterfly.  After some time, Berra turned back into a person, and Maalira landed on her finger.  They talked for a little about what Jar-eel was doing, and Maalira turned back into a person.

Berra suggested not doing anything that Jar-eel wanted, and in particular not killing the crocodile because by dying it could come back and Jar-Eel with it. Apart from that her plan should be found out and stopped.  She suggested a thing she said was ‘experimental’ which was doing things that they didn’t really understand, and trying to navigate through the Heroquest.  They held hands, and tried to walk towards trouble, as Maalira correctly suggested that would be where their friends were.  Maalira heard noise, and they went that way.

X1138 was in Geo’s where the Sartarites were doing lots of dancing and singing, none of which he really understood. He then found himself back in the marble hall. As he moved he noticed his iron skin was a marvel of design. He looked around and listened to the ground, getting the sense that the marble was alive.  Stone was… not dead.

X11 then finally noticed the Mine Manager, made of quicksilver, flowing about the place examining parts of the floor.  Every time he stopped, he became aluminium, solid and unyielding, patient as he observed.  X1138 attempted to walk over to him, but instead found himself inside the Manager’s point of view, looking down.  He could see a ferny engraving through which the mercury that ran everywhere was not moving, and it was leading to some strange realisations.  The World Machine was not entirely perfect, but had flaws that could not be predicted.  X1138 was aware this was heresy, but as the Mine Manager said that those who were not dwarfs would be needed too, he fell back into Geo’s, collapsing to the floor.  He was now wearing not iron but steel armour; his own, in fact.  The crowd cheered for the show, and everything else.

Back in the stomach of Teeth and Salt, Xenofos and the spear were still tumbling around. He worked out that he had the space to turn the spear around, but somehow it went crooked in his hand and was getting pushed towards the weak point again.  He put his left hand in the way, and the spear-head hit his hand, and bent.  He suddenly found himself in a large, long cavern. It wasn’t a crocodile – just a cave. How could he have thought it was a crocodile? He was not sure if he had been there before. His spearhead was bent, but his solid gold Sun Dome templar armour was light on him, as if it weighed nothing.

Meanwhile, or at some different timeless time, Maalira saw X1138, who also saw her.  He took her hand and moved towards her, stepping fully into the Heroquest at a different place within the marble hall.  He could recognise the definition of Chalana Arroy as the perfect healing unit, hovering in place around her as a halo, and insisted that she was not Repair Unit Maalira, but,THE Repair Unit.  Maalira offered him healing, which he accepted.  Within this place the internal damage manifested as a broken nose which she could fix with a twist, and she did.  She felt how his skin was apparently made of some kind of metal.

X1138 told Maalira that the World Machine was in need of repair. He looked around, and did not see the MIne Manager, but did see a small angry-looking black and white animal, which was surrounded by half-broken notations instead of a halo, and had one of its feet in a delicate tracery of quicksilver, stopping it from moving.  The angry animal told him, in Berra’s voice, that they needed to ‘go fuck up a goddess’.

X1138 said that they needed to fix the machine, and the tiny animal glitched a bit, but said that the goddess was cheating.  X1138 heard harp music intensifying.  The honey badger dashed for a door that had not been there a moment before.  X1138 tried to show the non-functional valve to Maalira, but he could not find it.  However, she felt at the floor, understanding it was alive but not knowing how to heal it.  She did put right the smear of quicksilver that the honey badger had left behind, and that mollified X1138, who said they could proceed.  He checked for his sword and found his perfect hammer.

Xenofos continued to walk, heading downwards without entirely realising that he had passed out of the Earth and was below Ernalda. He became aware that he is in the Underworld, but not of just how deep.  It was so vast that on his way down he walked for days, years, decades… there was always something new to look at. When he called on Uleria on song, he could hear things like pipes and drums periodically, but never a harp. Up ahead, he heard the sounds of a master drummer playing. He continued to sing as he approached a cave on his right – the origin of the drumming.  He looked inside, saw the full power of something within, and mercifully fainted.

Varanis was on the huge boat with angry newtlings and a very unimpressed duck. There were lots of things to pounce on but most of them carried pointy sticks they were aiming at her. Yinkin Varanis went low looking for the best thing to pounce on. She heard steps from behind her.  The startled cat hopped into air and twisted around to land neatly and wash at her paw having meant to do that.  She could see a huge man whose skin flowed like water yet stayed on him.  She had the idea that when he had walked, tiller in hand, the boat had moved under her, and he had not left his post.  He told her, “Airboy you are lost.”

Yinkanis told Diros he did not want to swim again, and the boatman thought, and then said he had a problem.  Yinkanis asked if he could pounce it, and Diros nodded.  His cargo had mice.  With the cat looking eager, the boatman both held the tiller and was the sailor moving a hatching aside.  The shadowcat killed every rodent on boat, and demanded scritches.  As a reward for the help, Diros agreed that boats could have cats on, and asked where Yinkin wanted the cat to land.  Varanis was in control of her thoughts enough to answer that she wanted to go where her friends were.  They drew in by a river band where Maalira and X1138 were.  Diros said the others were not by water, and the boat moved away.

Xenofos woke to find himself hanging upside down, wrapped in web. Below him was a hillside with a tower on one side, and a fire atop the tower.  He was unsure of who he was, but fairly certain he could choose between being Yelmalio or being Lhankor Mhy and understanding what he was seeing.  He chose Yelmalio and the fire began to move, and scale changed. The fire was the hair of a troll woman, and the hill was her spider body.  She looked up at him in interest.  He greeted her and she greeted him back, and smiled, showing some very unusual dentition.  After a moment, she said she had heard the song and was interested in it; she had not heard such in a long time.  Xenofos said it was not done yet, and suddenly the woman looked oddly hungry.  He had seen Cragspider, or someone like her, before, and recognised her from that and from descriptions.

He asked if she’d take ransom, but she noted happily that he probably had little that was worth more to her than being fed, as she was hungry right now, and sometimes very hungry.  She pulled him down to the ground, but then did not eat him.  Instead, she struck the ground with a pedipalp, bringing forth a flame that seemed to have Berra in it.  Xenofos immediately shouted out a warning, telling her to get away.  Apparently interested, Cragspider asked about the Humakti, and he refused to tell her anything.

While they waited for Berra to approach³or at least, while Cragspider waited and Xenofos presumably dreaded Xenofos tried to look at Cragspider, using the Moon Rune to widen his consciousness.  It was too much for him and he had to look away.  After Xenofos asked about Jar-eel⁴I wish I remembered that bit better – GM she told Xenofos to sing her an old song.  She followed it, and apparently in the fire, Berra heard, and began hurrying.  Cragspider seemed to enjoy the music, and when he had finished, including telling her of his recent understanding of the goddess, she set him free and gave him a gift.  She struck the ground in a complex pattern with her front legs, like she was drumming, but he could not keep the rhythm in his mind.  She told him to go up and out, but he felt it was better to go down, thinking that the Earth was still down there⁵In some respects it was.  In others… not..

Behind him, Berra went into Cragspider’s cave.  Xenofos paused outside it, and then went back to meet Berra.  He heard most of the conversation; Berra asked if Cragspider would eat Jar-eel to make her part of the Great Compromise. The answer was no.  Berra gave some form of a gift ⁶most of her left ring finger, as a snackrifice, although Xenofos did not notice what, or that there was blood on her.

Berra told Xenofos that they needed to go up, but then paused and asked if all rivers were one river.  On hearing a yes-and-no answer from Xenofos, who was now much more like Lhankor Mhy, she decided that they need to go down instead[because the Styx was a river and she was pretty sure it was close by.[/footnote]. She warned Xenofos to not say anything.  He asked, “Will you lie?” and she was not in the least bit offended by that, but shook her head.   They headed down to the river and there found a boatman who was every boatman – life and death, Jeset and Diros.  Berra helped Xenofos onto the boat, kneeling to give him a platform, and making very sure he did not get wet.  The boatman asked where they wanted to go and Berra said that was pretty complicated.  The boatman turned to Xenofos, who said simply, ‘To Varanis’.  The group were once again brought together, at a river, on a cold plain under a silver sky.

Berra is mostly herself (but Humakt is forming around her). Varanis is a shadow cat. X11 is the mine manager. Xenofos is Lhankor Mhy and himself. Maalira is Chalana Arroy. 

 “Hmmm, dice, character sheet…” – Xenofos
“Shit. Plot. I knew there was something I’d forgotten.” – GM

“Possibly turning my volume on would help.” – X1138
“Is there a knob for that?” – GM

“We had a Yabba-dabba-do time.” – X11, on meeting the Flintnails

“That’s a croc, not a dragon.” – Xenofos
“You say that.” – GM
“Oh fuck. But it certainly looks like a dragon.” – Xenofos

“Maalira.” – GM
“Yes.” – Maalira
“You have a crocodile running at you.” – GM
“Heck.” – Maalira

“What the sable dung, Berra!” Berra the Wulf sits down, stomps earth with its tail and gets Maalira the butterfly to follow her.

“Why are you a butterfly?” – Berra
“You were a wolf.” – Maalira

“Other than in trouble, where would Varanis and Xenofos be?” Berra

“Can you roll me spear?” – GM
“Well, no.” – Xenofos

“Someone write that down. Later I will pretend I said it.” – GM

“Out of character, the political fall out of crawling out of a back alley wearing this armour…” – Xenofos’ player on finding himself in solid gold templar armour

“There is an error in the machine.” – X1138
“Yes, it’s called Jar-eel!” – Maalira

“X11 and the terrible, horrible, very bad day – sounds like the title for this log.” – Varanis

“GMs pause to consult on how best to torture Xenofos.” – Varanis
“‘entertain'” – GM (Berra)

“Sons of Karg (Kyger Litor rune lords) have a geas to always listen to the end of the performance. Nice to see customs are upheld. X would not know that anyway.” – Xenofos
“Xenofos mentioned it to Berra once, I think.” – Berra/GM
“And yes, that was definitely important.” – Berra/GM

“You wanna unmute, yeah?” – Berra
“Maybe?” – Xenofos

“I can’t hear very well because I have earplugs in.” – Someone off camera

“I was wondering if you’d wrap up Jar-eel in your web and bring her into the compromise.” – Berra
“… no.” – Cragspider

“Alas, my memory of that session was wrong…” – GM
“Xenofos was merely in the larder.” – GM

• 1
  Uses jump to augment grapple and jumps on the croc
• 2
  Probably her, but it could have been Jar-eel, and Xenofos did not mention this out loud
• 3
  or at least, while Cragspider waited and Xenofos presumably dreaded
• 4
  I wish I remembered that bit better – GM
• 5
  In some respects it was.  In others… not.
• 6
  most of her left ring finger, as a snackrifice