After this game, I picked up a new shift at work, which prevented me from playing anymore online games during the Scarabae timeslot. Also sometime after this game, the referee, Jack, renamed Scarabae "Umberwell", and he's been posting a lot of new ideas and hosting a lot of new games in the renamed city.
I harbor some hope that I'll get a chance to venture back to the weird city of Umberwell-Scarabae in the future, but for now, this post is a swansong.
At the end of Travita's previous adventure in Scarabae, Yuriko, the adopted daughter of her tiefling "odd jobs" broker Koska, was kidnapped by anti-city cultists called the Children of Fimbul.
Traviata may have been experiencing a bit of an identity crisis over her previous failures to sufficiently punish "the guilty" (basically, other, more successful artists) but the other half of her life's mission was to protect "the innocent" (herself, and other people who remind her of herself) - and Koska's daughter Yuriko certainly qualified! So together with her previous companions, Khajj the minotaur cleric, Crumb the kenku artificer, and Viktor the dragonborn sorcerer, and a new ally, Dr Aleister Whiffle the human fighter, Traviata boarded a steamship bound for Zarubad, the trading port nearest the jungle where the Children of Fimbul are believed to be holed up with Yuriko.
Zarubad proved to be quite different from the close, dark, dirty streets of Scarabae. Traviata had passed from a city where it seemed to always be night (or at least draped in impenetrable fog) to a city bathed in sunlight, the hot glow like being fixed in the opera's limelight, the wide streets a crowded riot of colored fabrics and flowers, the air thick with the scent of spices and sweating bodies.
In an attempt to
Unfortunately, no matter how many maps they bought, every drawing seemed to disagree with all the others. The local guides likewise had nothing but ill-words for one another, so the group hired the most self-promoting specimen, a young woman named Salome, who was only too happy to tell them that all the other guards were frauds, charlatans, and thieves out to rob them of their wages. Traviata took an instant liking to the young woman and trusted her implicitly. On Salome's advice, they finished shopping by buying a canoe, a barrel of water, tents and mosquito netting, and a few other camping supplies, and finally set out into the jungle.
Collectively, the group decided to take the western branch of the river that led into the jungle. It was rumored to go deeper than its twin, and Salome claimed that it led all the way to a depression where lobster people lived. Traviata thought this "depression" sounded an awful lot like the "basin" she knew they should be headed towards, so it was decided. In less than a day on the water, they passed into the jungle itself, and as they did, the sky went dark from the canopy overhead, and the air filled with the sounds of frogs, insects, monkeys. On the third day, Khajj and Traviata both had good luck while fishing, supplementing their dry (though spicy and flavorful) rations.
On the sixth day down the river, they found a clearing that looked like an abandoned campsite. They found evidence of recent digging and dug it back up, finding a cache containing folded wooden tables and chairs, perhaps left by someone planning to return later. On the seventh day they found a more permanent campsite ... or rather, they found the remains of a more permanent campsite, since the place had been burned to the ground, with nothing but the scorched shells of cabins and long-buildings remaining. They were about to return to their canoes when Khajj spotted a statue he was sure had religious significance - a giant image of a man carrying a crocodile on his back. He was intrigued, but when he asked Salome, she knew nothing about either campsite, and had never heard of such a statue or image before, and Khajj felt the first tremors of misgiving pass through his heart. Searching the campsite further revealed no clues, only that whoever burned the place also seemed to have broken and wrecked everything that wasn't consumed by the fire, except for a tarot card depicting Strength, found in the mess hall.
Khajj's mighty heart fluttered again, and he remembered a human parable that might make sense of the statue. The first man who stood on a riverbank spoke to the first crocodile to come up onto the land. The two made an agreement with each other, that each would carry the other in times of danger. The crocodile began by carrying the man across the river, then climbed aboard the man's shoulders where it remained for the rest of his life, leaving the man feeling burdened and deceived. Salome said she'd never heard that story before, and Traviata too felt the first whispers of doubt begin to tickle her ears.
The statue had a doorway with stairs leading downward built into its base, and the group decided to investigate. They arrived in a long hall, and though Viktor's lizard eyes could spot a door at the far end, his spell to create a magical hand couldn't reach it. Mighty Khajj led the group through the darkened hall, and his canny senses noticed a pit trap in the center of the floor, and, after the group had sidled around that, the trigger for some other trap just ahead. Crumb was able to trigger the trap from a distance, releasing a huge scything blade that swept across the hall, and then ran forward and spiked the trapdoor shut. Finally close enough, they asked Viktor to open the far door with his mage hand, although just as he did, everyone but Salome experienced a kind of premonition and fell to the floor to take cover. As the door opened, Salome was thrown backward down the hall, as though by the shockwave from a silent, invisible explosion. Inside the door they found a spiral staircase leading up into the statue itself, with the skeleton of a giant lizard or crocodile scattered around the foot of the stairs. Aleister felt very worried that the bones might somehow reanimate, but Triavata thought that the skull would make an excellent crown and put it on. (A lot of my characters end up doing things like this. It might be my fondness for hats.)
To ease Aleister's mind Viktor cast a spell to sense magic and examined the bones. They were ordinary, but when he looked at the staircase, he noticed that several of the steps were somehow enchanted, and marked them out by drawing on the steps immediately before and after each one. They made their way safely to the top, where they found a large globular jug hanging from the wall by a strap. Guessing it might be important, Traviata tried to identify the object, but Victor simply pulled it down, in a hurry to return to safety outside. Somehow the jug had been weighing down the lever it had been hung from like a coat peg, and when it was removed, the lever popped up, and the entire structure began to collapse. Even the statue itself seemed to rain down upon them. Crumb, Traviata, and Salome were all nearly crushed, but Khajj rescued Traviata and hearty Salome somehow stayed on her feet and managed to pull Crumb's body to safety. Aleister and Viktor clung together, limped out side-by-side. Outside in the wreckage, Khajj and Aleister administered aid to Crumb and Traviata, saving them from death. Finally safe, the group made camp for the night on the shore.
In the morning, Traviata fully examined the clay vessel and found it to be an alchemical jug, an enchanted object capable of generating gallons of fresh water and other liquids. Before leaving, the group made a final sweep of the campsite. Khajj found and tamed a baby bird that was being kept in a pen by the remains of the barracks. Salome had never seen a bird like it before, but Aleister was able to match it to a drawing from the guidebook he bought in Zarubad - it was an axe-beak, a fearsome jungle predator. Khajj seemed quite pleased to have a new pet. Viktor meanwhile decided for some reason to enchant a pebble to make light, then threw it down the military latrine. Surprisingly, he found a human body down there, a solider wearing scale armor and carrying a warhammer. Crumb climbed down into the horrible pit and retrieved the soldier's belt pouch, which contained five small gemstones. After bathing in the river, he was allowed back in the canoe, and the group continued downstream. For the rest of that day, and four more days after, they continued down the river, eating fresh fish, drinking fresh alchemically-treated water, and hearing distant roaring sounds like some animal loud as thunder, growing closer the further they went downstream.
On the evening of the thirteenth day, the river ran out, widening out to a mudflat and disappearing down a sinkhole, perhaps continuing somewhere far underground. The group left their boat by the "shore" and approached a plateau that stood over the jungle in this spot. Salome claimed success and bragged that she had successfully led them to the "depression" she'd told them about, brushing off all questions about the lobster people who were supposed to live there. Traviata wondered if the plateau could really be the lip of some great crater, and if so, if it could be the "basin" that held the lost city she still suspected the Children of Fimbul were using as their jungle hideaway, the place they were keeping poor Koska's kidnapped daughter, Yuriko.
Viktor led the way, using his magical slippers to walk up the wall as easily as he walked across the ground. As he strolled up the cliff-face, he saw a boulder, practically a whole island made of stone, floating in the air above the jungle far too high up for any method of approach the group currently had on-hand. He passed carvings of winged lizards and curling flames. Eventually, he reached a landing and threw down a rope to his friends, inspecting the rotted remains of a wooden door set directly into the wall of the plateau. After his friends joined him, Viktor used his mage hand to push the last remnants of the door out of the way, when he heard a frail woman's voice call out from inside: "Hello? Who's there?" An impossibly old-looking woman toddled out of the doorway, short, stooped over, wrinkled and wizened with age.
Viktor tried engaging the woman in conversation, with mixed results. "Victor? Are you the Victor who brings the bread? No one has brought me bread in a long time." Eventually he learned that the woman, who insisted on being called "Nanny" was especially perturbed by a group of "those GOD-DAMN bird people" who, she claims, keep breaking into her home and stealing her things. She gives Crumb a long, evil look until Viktor is able to regain her attention.
Noticing that "Nanny" keeps grumbling about how things are "not like they were in the OLD days," Viktor tries asking her what the old days were like. "Oh, you mean the OLD days? You mean before those GOD-DAMN bird people came around and started ruining everything?" Yes, those old days. It emerged that in the old days, Nanny was a bit of a literal hell-raiser, dancing naked in the woods, summoning demons from the Pit, and performing other bits of black magic just for the fun of it. "Not like these punk kids these days, no respect, and not like those GOD-DAMN bird people neither!" Traviata asked if Nanny could use some of her black magic to cast a spell to locate a lost child. Nanny readily agreed, but it quickly became clear that she thought they were finding the child so that they could put together a good, wholesome, old-fashioned human sacrifice. Aghast, Viktor tried a different tactic, and asked the easily-distractable old woman if she could help them find some people who'd moved into the area recently, some people who were practicing dark magic, but doing it like a bunch of PUNKS and AMATEURS, not the RIGHT way, not like Nanny and her friends used to do it in the OLD days. Nanny (again) readily agreed, and wandered back inside to cast her spell. Khajj wanted to sneak away immediately as soon as the woman was out of sight, but the others persuaded him to stay and hear her out.
(Now, Traviata is a smart woman, but she's not very emotionally complex. She has two goals in life, feels like she hasn't been doing enough to accomplish one of them, and then finds herself face-to-face with an actual honest-to-goodness wicked witch who lives in the forest and wants to cook a child in her oven. It shouldn't be a surprise what happens next. And - if you think more carefully about the tropes of D&D than I was at the time - it also shouldn't be a surprise how that works out for her. I WAS surprised, but you shouldn't be.)
While the group waited, Vikor used his magic shoes to walk around the perimeter of the plateau, and saw the wreck of a sailing ship, looking to all the world like it was fresh out of the ocean, lying broken atop the jungle canopy. He returned just around the same time Nanny was finishing up her hour-long spellcasting ritual. She emerged carrying a hand-drawn map that called for them to backtrack several days back up the river (Khajj shot Salome a withering look) and would have them end up near the shipwreck Victor saw. "Now you want to avoid this spot here, here, and here ... that's where those GOD-DAMN bird people make their filthy nests ..." She started mumbling again until Viktor assured her they'd use the map to get revenge on the AMATEURS for her. "Yeah, really show 'em what black magic should look like! Now in my day, in the OLD days, we would have skinned them alive before roasting them on the..." Again, she began to ramble at some length before Viktor cut her off again. "Victor? Oh Victor! Oh are you the one who brings the bread?" At this point it was Traviata who cut her off, play-acting at feeling happy and offering her a celebratory drink to her health. Despite seemingly having her fill of all the scenery she could chew, Nanny happily accepted the beverage and quaffed it in one gulp.
What Nanny actually drank was magical, alchemical poison, which would have killed a lesser being, but mostly just seemed to make her angry! She immediately slashed Traviata with her fingernails, nearly killing the poor singer. Nearly everyone else attacked Nanny with their guns or spells, and all of them bounced off her iron-hard hide, although Salome managed to cut Nanny with her scimitar, drawing first blood from the old crone. Nanny retaliated by slashing Salome, again, nearly murdering the woman with one stroke. Nanny continued to shrug off almost everything the group could throw at her, though Aleister's magical singing spear was able to pierce her flesh as well, as Nanny continued to savage Salome, who at this point was only kept alive by Khajj's quick thinking and magical healing touch. Finally, at the end, Aleister managed to pin her down with his singing spear, Crumb used his magical firearm to put an enchanted bullet into her, and Salome, whirling around like a pirouetting ballerina, swung wide her scimitar and lopped Nanny's head clean off, ending the fight.
That was the end of the night, and as I said, I never made it back to find out how the adventure ended, although in fairness, I don't think Jack ever made it back to this particular plotline either. After the new year, he changed the city's name and began running a slightly different sort of campaign there. When Traviata next sets foot in Scarabae-Umberwell, it will be a far different place than she remembers. I imagine her stepping off a boat on the docks, her memories of Zarubad already fading, unable to remember why she ever left the dank and gloom of her home, to rediscover anew what weird delights await her in the remade Umberwell.
