A World Of Endless Horrors (Reboot)

[X] Plan Lakeside Foundation
-[X][Adventure] Scout the resource sites
-[X][Adventure] Sneak into your old town
-[X][Industry] Make tradable goods
-[X][Mysticism] Begin consecrating the lake

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As most of your warriors leave, Sen begins the difficult work of making the lake into a holy place. It's not ideal for the purpose. Though your people had a long history with this lake they didn't truly live here, and though they killed and died on the lake's shores, no one battle stands apart as particularly memorable. Moreover, the only ritual Sen knows by heart will require her to claim the whole of the lake, by setting appropriate anchors into its shores and placing herself at the center. The resulting site will be far more diffuse and harder to use than a proper shrine or temple might be - but then again the sheer size may be an advantage in and of itself.

This is a great undertaking, especially for a half-trained mage and a small and poor village, so the going is slow. For now all that can be done is for her assistants to plant bundles of rowan twigs into the ground, surround them with small piles of acorns, and water them with the blood of small woodland animals and fish. Sen walks between them, tracing designs in the dirt that she carefully dusts with red chalk.

Your warriors trace a path between the resource sites, stopping at each one to clear out any useful tools or leftover materials. Burdened with several unglazed pots filled with half-dried herbs and mushrooms, they approach the river crossing leading to the hunting grounds. Having last crossed the river here less than two weeks ago, they don't expect to encounter any major trouble.

They find the river driving an enormous waterwheel that turns the stones of a mill that wasn't there before. Your warriors huddle in the bushes and a few minutes later the miller emerges onto the roof, nine feet tall and terribly gaunt. As they sink deeper into cover, now very sure that he is at the very least a monster, he strides onto the wheel and runs against its turning for a time, seemingly reveling in its motion. Soaked through with water spray, he steps back onto the roof and throws his too-wide arms open as if reveling in the day.

A noise comes from the opposite side of the building. The monstrous miller jumps down to the ground - an easy enough feat from a creature his height. The stealthiest of your warriors steps out of cover and runs into position to observe as quietly as he can. The miller greets a strange humanoid, hunchbacked and fur-wrapped, looking like someone tried to make a man out of a squirrel or a wolf pup and quit three quarters of the way through. The newcomer is carrying a mutilated deer carcass across its shoulders. The miller grasps the carcass, almost tenderly, and carries it inside. Through a narrow window you catch glimpses of him as he sticks the deer between the great stones. The gap is too narrow for it to fit easily, but the miller uses his great strength to cram it inside, certainly breaking most of the bones in the process. With an echoing grunt he presses the still-rotating stones together, grinding the carcass down.

Your warriors exchange looks. This is a very unusual manifestation, and unusual things are dangerous. Ordinarily you would prefer to give it a wide berth. But you walk the path of valor now, and you can't back away from a challenge.

The slimmest of your warrior approaches the mill, oiled up and dressed in the clothing of your largest warrior, stuffed with leaves and with false arms made from tree branches. As she crosses an invisible boundary, the miller bursts out and seizes her with unnatural speed. She finds herself carried helplessly toward the grinding stones.

But in truth she's not as helpless as she appears. She easily slips out of the oversized clothing, leaving the monster clutching a fake arm. Her true arms were pressed against her body, holding a long knife. She twists while she falls and slashes at the miller's belly. The monster roars in pain and outrage, but she's already tumbling in-between its long legs and slashing at the back of the shins. Though horrors are harder to kill than men, the ones who take bodies of flesh still need their blood and sinews. Too many wounds and they'll stop moving.

Not just yet, though. The miller continues to roar and grasps one of the great rotating beams attached to a stone wheel, ripping it from its moorings and wielding the whole thing like a makeshift club. He chases after your warrior, almost crossing the gap in two steps. But she slips out the door at the last possible moment, and when the monster emerges after her he's hit by a barrage of arrows and spears from the rest of her party. He staggers backward, roars once more, and throws the club in anger. But that proves to be his last act of defiance. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, he slumps over. Almost immediately, his turns dry and brittle and starts falling away. The flesh quickly follows, leaving behind something black and rotten.

Taking a moment to celebrate, your party advances into the mill, on guard against the return on one of the miller's hunters or any other horrors that may be lurking inside the structure itself. But they find only the broken machinery and a wall lined with crude jars. Looking inside, Skylar the warchief finds them filled with brownish red powder. It smells of blood. Skylar offers to bet a week's worth of rations that a mage would find these valuable, but finds no takers.

It is certain that the jars are coming home with your war party, but what is to be done about the mill itself? In fatter times your tribe may find its properties useful, but it's uncertain whether destroying its occupant was enough to render it safe. It may be safer to burn the building to ashes and bury the stones.

[ ] Keep the mill intact

[ ] Destroy it


Returning to the village laden with loot, your war party stays for a night of celebration and vigil, then sets off for the more dangerous mission: your abandoned home town. Approaching the outermost buildings, the party pauses. The monster that turned half of the town to ruins can be neither seen nor heard, but this does not mean it's gone. It may be dormant, or low to the ground, or split into hundreds of individual angry ghosts. The looting must be both swift and cautious. But what is the target?

[ ] Outermost buildings

Never mind going after great prizes. Something as simple as a metal axe or a barrel of salted vegetables is a treasure to your people right now. Snatch what you can easily find and get gone before something finds you.

[ ] The armory

Weapons enough to arm your current tribe twice over and the equipment from the attached smithy. What more could a warrior want?

[ ] The Town Hall

The former meeting place of the Ring still houses many important heirlooms passed down from your ancestors. And, perhaps more importantly, coin and valuables that was to be used for the town's needs lies buried in the meeting chamber.

[ ] The temple ruins

With books of magic and proper reagents, your mage could be much more valuable than she is right now.

[X] Keep the mill intact

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It's difficult to say what good or harm may come of keeping the watermill intact. If the powder your party looted proves valuable, you hope to manufacture more of it. Yet you don't know for what purpose this mill was created or if destroying the miller foiled that purpose. It may be that you're allowing a dark force to run rampart in your woods, but you are not in a position to turn down any potential advantage.

Upon the party's return, Sen evaluates the powder and confirms its importance. This is dried blood, but preserved in a way that makes it just as good as fresh blood for the purposes of magic. There is a ritual that can do much the same thing, but it's a complicated one. Of course this is just animal blood, so it's not terribly potent in the first place, but it's still a good source of power. Mages can bring some power of their own to bear, but they overwhelmingly prefer to serve as the fulcrum for other forces, be they sacrificial lifeblood, the rays of the sun, or the repetitive patterns of history. With these Sen can perform rituals that would normally be beyond her strength. They would also fetch a good price at any market.

The party has also gathered everything of value at each of the resource sites. They brought half-dried herbs, and salt meant to be used as a preservative, and a great supply of arrows and throwing spears, and special paints and glazes meant for pots, and many good flint stones that can be turned into tools, as well as a few other tools or trinkets. All these things were dropped off before the adventurers set off for the village to empty out their loot bags...and to account for the possibility of them not coming back.

[X] The temple ruins

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Many of the town's buildings were torn apart by the vengeful gestalt's hunt for their inhabitants. But the temple has been practically obliterated. It is here that the old mage and his apprentices tried to take some sort of a stand. You have no details. All you know is that whatever they tried, it didn't work and it focused the monster's wrath squarely upon them. It's possible that the time it took to so thoroughly destroy the temple was what allowed the people who make up your new village to slip away.

Your warriors dig through the ruins as best they can. By straining to lift a big slab of wall, they uncover a hole that leads them down to the half-collapsed underground levels. Picking through the rubble is a nerve-wracking task; there is a keen awareness that every time a rock is shifted, the noise might attract the thing that caused all this destruction in the first place. It's one thing to risk one's life in battle against the monster and the beast; it's another to lose it to an overwhelming malevolent force and be buried in the rubble before you even know you're in a fight.

Yet, almost surprisingly, everything goes fine. After an hour of searching for books and strange substances, the warriors end up with what looks to be a decent haul of both. Deciding not to press their luck, they retreat in good order and quietly sneak out. It's only as they're well out of the village that one of the warriors peers back and sees something. Not the roiling storm of angry souls hauling around the corpse of a god, but a single woman with a knife sitting on a crumbled wall.

Your warriors spend eight harrowing days camped out in the wilderness, walking back and forth, repeatedly crossing running water and hard earth and leaving behind false tracks. These techniques would work better on humans or animals, but it is hoped that the very effort they make may prove meaningful, even if the results of that effort don't. It's only after they're relatively certain that nothing is following them that they complete the short journey home.

Sen spends a while meditating on the eyewitness account and leafing through her new books. Like your warriors, she is reasonably certain that the knife-wielding woman is the last of the sacrifices; the maiden who opened his belly with a knife. Also like your warriors, Sen is positive that the maiden is no longer human. Having given it a lot of thought, she narrowed down the possibilities to two:

The first is that the souls that destroyed your village have dispersed. Having expended their strength on a rampage, and eager to forget hundreds of years of agony, they might have faded away, leaving behind only a few ghosts, their liberator among them.

The other possibility is more worrying. The swarm of souls seemed formless from the outside, but that didn't mean that every souls within it had equal weight. The last of the sacrifices would freshly dead, her lucidity not destroyed by years spent in a monster's stomach, and she would have just slain a god. She would certainly be the strongest presence within the swarm, by a considerable margin. It's conceivable that as the initial rampage faded she took more and more control, silenced dissenting voices through sheer willpower, and finally absorbing the other souls in the gestalt. If that happened, the power she gained that way would be enough to catapult her to the status of a goddess.



(Select 2 actions)

[ ][Adventure] Run Drills

The difference between true warriors and those who merely hold weapons is grueling, unrelenting practice. Begin the process of forging your fighters into a true warband.

[ ][Adventure] Patrol nearby woods

Get the lay of the land and make sure you spot any encroaching threats in advance.

[ ][Adventure] Scout the trading routes

Walk down the roads to the Grand Trunk, the Raised Valley, and the city of the Tunnel Lords and evaluate their fitness for travel.

[ ][Adventure] Garrison

Double up on watch duty and make sure your warriors are prepared to respond to danger at a moment's notice.

[ ][Adventure] Sneak into your old town

Your former home is a treasure trove of wealth and supplies, though one that's haunted. Enter it, grab what you can, then get out.



(Select 1 action)

[ ][Industry] Increase fortifications

[ ][Industry] Make rafts

[ ][Industry] Make spare weapons

[ ][Industry] Make tradable goods


Sen has immersed herself in study. Many of the tomes your warriors retrieved are reference materials, not really meant to be memorized. And not every one of the tomes survived the assault on the temple. Even so, there is a lifetime's worth of material.

Between the books, the reageants, and the dried blood from the mill, Sen can now perform 1 additional action. She's also learned additional rituals.

(Select 2 action)

[ ][Mysticism]Perform a divination
-[ ] Target?

Learn specific information about something nearby, or else receive a flood of vague visions that usually contains one or two pieces of important knowledge.

[ ][Mysticism] Continue consecrating the lake

The accumulated progress won't automatically fade away if you interapt the process. But over time elements of it may be disrupted.

[ ][Mysticism]Pour sunlight into firewood

Imbue the wood used for your fires with the light of the sun, to make the flames that much more potent at searing the horrors.

[ ][Mysticism]Abjure insects and other small, unclean things

Purify your camp through aromatic smoke imbued with charms of cleansing and protection.

[ ][Mysticism]Make Wilder Brew

Brew potent grain alcohol that makes those who drink it nearly feral, able to fight without fear and heedless of injury.

[ ] [Mysticism] Guardian Dolls

Grant a temporary semblance of life to dolls woven from cloth or straw. Should an enemy wander near them, they will make alarmed sounds and try to cling to the enemy's face.

[ ] [Mysticism] Messenger Bird

Coerce a bird into delivering a message to a nearby, known place.

[ ] [Mysticism] Untangle the Snarls

Reach into the unseen world and bring it in order, accelerating the time when it's safe to hold another Festival.

[X][Adventure] Patrol nearby woods
[X][Adventure] Run Drills
[X][Industry] Increase fortifications
[X][Mysticism]Pour sunlight into firewood
[X][Mysticism] Continue consecrating the lake

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On the outermost edge of their patrol routes your warriors run into trouble. By the light of the night's fires they see a great wolf, taller than a man at the shoulder, menacing spikes of bone protruding from its back. The whole war party immediately jumps to its feet. Unlike the amorphous creatures of the night, a horror safely ensconced in a vessel of flesh has nothing to fear from light, and little enough from fire. Which is why such creatures normally roam during the day, not in the middle of the night.

Yet the wolf passes by without so much as glancing at the humans. An outcome as terrifying as it is fortunate. The piecemeal destruction of humanity seems to be the monsters' main reason for existence. Many of them will back off when faced with a clearly superior force, but you've never heard of one that would neglect to investigate a large group of humans.

Your warriors are still at battle stations as another horror passes by. This one is moving around on long, spindly insect legs that bear an emaciated body that's practically all spine and a grotesquely oversized head with a too-large mouth full of crooked flat teeth. This particular creature is known to stalk its prey for hours, hiding behind trees and making disturbing noises, then silently appearing behind its victim just as their nerves are at their most frayed. Then, just as they turn around...well, it's not important right now. The important thing is that right now it's skittering out in the open, at the wrong time of day entirely. And just like the wolf, it ignores your party entirely.

Your warriors look at each other and swiftly begin walking. These monsters aren't hunting; they're fleeing. And despite their every instinct screaming at them not to, your warriors have to seek whatever's sent the horrors running.

It proves fairly easy. Not long after beginning the search they find themselves scrunching their noses in an effort to block out an unpleasant smell. As they follow it to the source, the smell becomes awful, then unbearable. Your people are forced to physically hold their noses shut and even that barely seems to help. It's as though the air itself is rotten.

It is near dawn that your warriors finally find the thing giving off the smell. It's a horror, but what a horror! It's less a creature and more a living, crawling swamp. A vast expanse of dense, black water filled with unidentifiable (yet clearly dead and rotting) green material and miscellaneous debris. Its slow yet inexorable passage tears the forest apart, ripping entire trees off their roots. Some of them sink into the horror's body, making it look all the more untidy. Others are left behind as part of a trail of devastation and stinking slime. Other monsters flee this thing and the noxious miasma surrounding it, save for the night's shapeshifters, who take the form of enormous leeches and slugs with various degrees of humanoid features and then crawl ahead of it as if they were an honor guard.

As dawn approaches, the foul thing finds its way to a large pond. It flows inside, easily forcing most of the original water out to overflow the forest floor. Spreading the debris and decaying plant matter on its surface, the horror stops for the day. Water is, after all, an imperfect protection from the biting light. Even so, your warriors don't like their chances with this creature, even in the light of day. It would be too easy for it to reach out and drag an offending warrior into the depths. Instead, the war party rushes home. Normally moving quickly in the daylight would be too risky, especially for someone who's already been traveling for half the night. But they must get as far ahead of this new horror as they can. Because its present course takes it towards your lake.

They arrive a day ahead of the monster, exhausted and with some wounds from minor threats encountered while moving too quickly. A plan is hastily assembled, and every villager rushes to fill a need. Aron rallies the laborers to march into the woods to prepare defenses at the one place the monster might be stopped before reaching you. Sen spends the precious jars of dried blood one after another, drawing on the stored energy to create enchantments of protection and fill ever more firewood with sunlight. Skylar and his warriors sleep; they're about to have a big night.

The midnight hour finds them at the edge of a ravine, lying in the dark. In lieu of fires they're surrounded by three jars' worth of protective runes. This should be enough to keep them from the attention of the things that go bump in the night...at least for now. As the air around them gradually turns to pure stench, the warriors clutch pomanders filled with aromatic herbs in an effort to keep their retching manageable. At last they hear a sloshing sound, and the treeline begins to collapse. The living swamp reaches the opposite edge of the ravine and begins to pour itself down the slope, nearly drowning the lesser horrors moving before it. But these creatures are clever, as far as horrors go. They're already ascending the other slope - the one leading straight to your warriors.

Said warriors leap into action the moment the first of the slugs makes its way up over the lip of the ravine, where the swamp monster can't easily reach. With a battlecry they drive the thing through with long spears, then pierce the second and third arrival with arrows. These things just look like animals, however primitive. They don't really have proper organs. But enough holes that leak fluid will generally put one down, if not forever then at least for long enough. Your people engage these lesser monsters in a pitched battle as the greater threat begins to slowly make its way up the other side, fighting gravity at every step. When the horrors take their forms, they become bound by their rules. So a creature made of sludge and water, however powerful, finds it difficult to flow uphill.

Two of your warriors fall. It would probably be more, except that you're not trying to kill off the crawling horde. You're just trying to pin them in place, at least for another...few...

Now!

The poisonous swamp is on the verge of overflowing the lip of the ravine to fall upon you. But a moment before it does, one of your warriors trikes a spark. It spreads to the carefully arranged wood shavings and dry leaves, then to the carefully laid out sticks and logs. And they burst with brilliant light that turns night to day.

Suddenly bathed in daylight, the portion of the living swamp closest to the fires loses coherence and turns to mere filthy water, flowing back down the slope. As for the shapeshifters, they scream and smoulder. Their half-substantial bodies are a poor shield against the sun's radiance. Their bodies lose their shapes, turning to formless, squirming masses. The ones that were already hurt shrivel to black husks. The others put up no resistance as your warriors go after them with spear and axe and soon they're shriveling too.

Below, the swamp monster rails against the assault. It throws up huge balls of muck and wet clay, but the angle doesn't let it get a good shot. The projectiles splatter against the ground but manage not to harm any of your warriors, who respond by snatching up the magically-burning logs and throwing them closer to the swamp monster.

Everything hinges on this part. Should the horror retreat up the opposite side of the ravine and find its way around while remaining on flat ground, you won't be able to stop it. At most, you'll have the opportunity to run from it. But you're counting on an important fact: the bodies the horrors take on seem to force their shape onto their minds. A monstrous wolf will hunt like an animal; a gnome will use tools and speak; this monster is mostly water. Driven into a corner it should do what water does.

And it works. The horror flows down the ravine like a disgusting flash flood, seeking an easier place to ascend. But your warriors chase after it. There are small bonfires set up alongside the ravine, and small, flammable rafts made of woven branches that can be pulled by hand in-between the bonfires. No matter how far the monster goes, it finds fire and sunlight barring its way.

Until, that is, it reaches the end of the ravine. Here the hills recede and a shallow, dry channel leads to a small river. The monster wouldn't willingly try to cross it. Running water has a purifying power all of its own and only the most substantial of monsters really find themselves comfortable in rivers and streams. But there is a lot more open space here, and more room to maneuver. On flat ground your tactics aren't a match for it.

But at that moment Skylar gives a sharp whistle. And way down at the other end of the ravine, your tribe's workers spring into action, breaking a temporary dam they worked so hard to build, blocking the small but persistent stream that normally runs down the ravine's center. Eighteen hours' worth of built up water comes crashing down, reaching halfway up the slopes. And it crashes into the horror like a hammer just before it can get out of the way. The creature is pushed and dragged down the channel and plunges halfway into the river. The fresh, running water tears at it, ripping away chunks of sludge and carrying them downstream, dispersing the monstrous essence.

And your warriors jump into action with one last load of burning, sunlight-infused wood, carried on a makeshift cart. The cart itself catches on fire as the warriors turn it over next to the horror. At the same time they attack with long poles, stirring up the horror, stymieing its attempts to smother the flame.

Sunlight burns the monster and the river tears at it. Much of its volume is gone, and what remains is centered around a solid clump of debris and broken trees. Slime tentacles poke out of the makeshift cell, splashing what water they came on the flames, and struggling to pull the shell away from the river.

But Skylar gives another battle roar and jumps forward, two others behind him. Exhausted and sickened, they give everything they have left as they stab at the monster's 'heart with their poles and then push and lift with all of their might. Something snaps, the clump comes undone, and trees and mud tumble down the river. In minutes, what remains of the great swamp has melted away. It's probable that the shores of the river will be home to a great number of slimes for years to come, but the greater horror will never be able to reconstitute itself.

The next day Sen finds herself practically thrumming with power. Your recent victory against monsters and corruption all rolled into one terrifying personification makes her task much easier. Where before she needed to anchor the holy site in ritual objects and feed it a slow trickle of power, she suddenly finds herself able to hammer the shore with spikes of pure energy. In no more than an hour she has her anchors and takes a small raft to the center of the lake. There, she draws on the history of this place and the roiling power of your most recent exploit and combines them to mark the whole of the lake as a place sacred to your people. A single memory will echo here forevermore.

[ ] Memory of Battle

This place is yours, and it's yours because you defend it. From now on the lake's shores will act as a sort of threshold, making it more difficult for enemies to sneak in and buoying the spirits of your warriors when they act in its defense. But these blessings fade a few steps from the shore, and will be lost entirely should you ever abandon your home rather than protect it.

[ ] Memory of Purity

The waters of this lake will become clean and clear, losing all trace of murkiness and driving out all things unclean. When freshly taken from its source, the water will help cure diseases and blights of all kinds.

[ ] Memory of Light

The waters will sparkle with the remembrance of a people on whom the sun shines. The lake will serve as an extra reserve for the luck that's carried you this far.


(Right now you guys should be so glad you get one re-roll.)