Hiya,
From the darkest times comes light!
Ahappi uses the power of the Aldrya Truestone from Boamund to fully heal Fraud, who then proceeds to do his best to bandage the others' worst wounds, and Shrett casts some magical healing to help. In the end, just Shrett and Boamund are left with nasty wounds but even they are conscious again. Bog, sane again and re-clothed, drags the demon bodies into a Death Rune form in triumph, and you leave that grim iron fortress through a rear gateway. No reinforcements show themselves; the fortress, while not silent, is isolated in the desolate highlands. Ahappi urinates on the back gate in spite. You descend a path out of the highlands, down into shadows.
You find yourselves at the edge of a vast and spectacularly deep four-walled pit. Steep stairs wind endlessly down the steep walls of the pit and into the darkness. This pit is far deeper than any you've seen before; this is the Underworld of the Underworld. It is dark beyond Dark; true Helldark; a tangible blackness that is impenetrable to Light, and even to Darksight; as blinding to those of the Dark as intense light is to those of the surface world. All around you, a terrible howling drowns out all other sounds. There is no possibility to be heard speaking over the din. Ahappi leads the way down. Time is meaningless in this descent; hours, days, weeks, perhaps years pass by. Each of you loses contact with the others [even if they hold hands or are tied together by rope]. Eventually it becomes impossible to tell if you are descending or ascending, or even if you are moving at all.
Within this most frightful pit, each of you come to the thought, “I am alone. I am lost.” You feel profound loneliness and despair in your isolation, and fear begins to gnaw at your hearts. This feeling coalesces into a very personal nightmare. But out in the darkness you sense something, as if the kinder night-darkness of Xentha lurks somewhere within the Helldark, holding potential comfort if only you can find it if you look back upwards, whence you came; in search of a Hidden Spark. Maybe your quest has come full circle and you can draw inspiration from the Sky Realm? You each have visions of the cloak of Xentha over the night sky and your eyes are drawn to one star or cluster that gives you succour.
Ahappi looks to the War Boat/Boat Planet and finds it very inspiring indeed, despite the Helldragon's pull [Nightdragon sees his plight, for inscrutable reasons pushes to strip him of his Water rune and convert it to Dragon; this would remove his passion for hero of the sea!]. He emerges stronger, and no longer fearful in the darkness. Bog does not fare well. He suffers from his Fear of Machines [the Hellmouth had terrible machines-surely more await beyond! Are those howling sounds machines?] and his Love of the Nightdragon does not bring him comfort; that Celestial Dragon constellation seems too far for him, so he emerges raving mad (again!) in terror, plagued by nightmares of machines consuming him, and it is only Ahappi's magical blessing that brings him back to some reason. Boamund Doubts the Captain [this is madness! The Captain has left you alone in Hell and you're doomed!], but looks to the Young God/Youth Star/Yelm and finds great comfort there, emerging deeply inspired. Fraud feels his Fear of Krarsht [Valkalta surely has allegiances with Krarsht-her many-legged kin must be scuttling here in the dark somewhere!] but relies on Arkat's star's power of the Ebon Sanctuary and that protects him. Shrett visualises the Hunter star to defends against his Fear of the Psychetheca [He heard about Vadeli on this quest and there have been undead aplenty-is the place beyond a hellish cellar of the library of Yomil the Blue Vadeli?], and this succeeds.
All but Bog gain a Star Heart ability to overcome flawed passions or otherwise inspire themselves in darkness. The effects of the Alone in the Dark station of the Demon Pit are powerful indeed.
Bridge of Demons: You regroup on a landing deep in Valkalta's Demon Pit of Hell. The awful howling of the Pit has subsided and is replaced by the sounds of chants, cries, screams, and drums from somewhere below. The stairs continue down to a vast ledge near a plateau where lights can be seen; it is presumably the source of the sounds. Although there are still hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stairs to climb down, the end is now in sight. You recall myths of this place. Chaos also entered the Underworld, not content to even leave the dead their meagre existence. The trolls had fled the light of the dead Sun, and so few defenders remained, though they were constantly strengthened by new victims of Chaos. Tyram's [the Sky Terror] sister Valkalta led the battle there, and it was only the light of the dead Yelm, weak and shadowed though it was, which kept the Halls of the Dead intact. Even so, Valkalta was never driven out completely in the long fight. She still rules one of the Hells, and so part of the Underworld remains dangerous even for those dead who are protected by powerful gods.
As you descend the last stretch of stairs, you can make out the plateau below. A narrow arch bridge spans the gap between the pit wall, where the stairs end, and the plateau. Two huge demons guard the bridge; their features obscured by fumes from this distance. Below the plateau and the bridge are endless swirling, howling, writhing hosts of Predark. Swarms of Chaos demons fly around the Pit and from time to time tentacles erupt out of the void and just as quickly sink back into the monstrous mire. Anything falling off that Bridge of Demons will be lost forever to the Void, pulled into the Chaosium at the very bottom of Glorantha and utterly consumed.
You see you must first cross the bridge spanning the gap between the pit wall and the plateau. Two large demons guard the bridge. Boamund draws his demon-slaying sword and it recognizes them easily. They serve Arrquong, the Lord of Despair, the Harbinger and Gatekeeper of Chaos, and guardian of the entry place of Chaos to Hell. It was crippled by the troll god Boztakang. Beware its prophecies of despair, the sword warns! Bog plugs his ears. You discuss a plan. In the War Boat myth, Waertag just bypassed them; and in your state you do not feel like a big demon-fight. So you gather your resources and cast Conceal and Darkwalk spells to hide yourselves from the demons, and approach the bridge. You see the demons up close, and they are terrible indeed; it would have been a brutal fight to defeat them.
The first has the head of a bearded man, the wings of a bird, and the body of a great scorpion. The second has the head of a saber-toothed tiger and the body of a powerful man. Each carries a mace and a sword. They are embroiled in an argument, growling out in Darktongue: the tiger-headed one first, “I say that last heroquester I ate was a duck. If it squawks like a duck when ye stab it, and tastes like a duck when ye eats it, then it's a duck.” To which the scorpion-bodied one retorts, “I say it was a keet. There's a difference. A keet is a cousin of a duck, that hails from the Eastern Isle of Itlanmorango. They dress different and look different and use dream magic.” The tiger one growls, “I knows there's a difference! But ye've got it all wrong, a keet is a kind of duck!” And the arguments go quickly back and forth: “No it isn't, cousins!” “Well some says a duck be a kind of keet, so mebbe it be purely academic.” “Well it could have been a newtling in a feather-dress for all we know.” “Now don't ye be ridiculous.” “Wait, what's that I smell? Not a duck.” They seem to smell you, but you still pass them without trouble, leaving them baffled by the smell.
You enter the depths of Valkalta's Demon Pit: (foe of trolls; twisted troll-demon; shadow-vampire Kozoru mistress; the cold that burns): Here, it is said, all evil things are condemned, or born, depending on one's perspective. There are countless demons in the Pit and on the Plateau; winged bearded giants, corrupted griffins, bat-headed men, man-headed bats, serpent-haired women, humanoid cockroaches and other monsters too grotesque to mention. Undead and ghosts wander listlessly amongst them. People walk amongst the demons, too, and similarly for now you seem to be ignored by everything here. Somewhere, a plaintive voice echoes across the Pit, “Torture is like air here; it is everywhere. Pain is worn here like clothing; Suffering is our bread; we are all well-fed. From here, the foundations of the Spike were shattered, and its dead pieces scour our dead flesh raw.” Great runes around the walls in various languages explain a myth: “This is The Evil Demon Prison. When Lodril conquered the Underworld, he put all of the undesirable things into this region, and locked them in with adamant doors and arcane signs of grindingly cruel power. Imprisoned here were Hunger, Madness, Fear, and Disease, along with their leader, Deshkorgos. They come out only when he lets them.” Yet other runes, written in a different, more jagged style, say “Ignore the lies of the false masters; they cannot reach down into the Void for its secrets. Valkalta is true mistress here; she can; and so her children are free.”
Still hidden by your magics, you cross to the Plateau of Suffering: Beyond the arch bridge is a vast plateau lit up by thousands of flaming pits. In each pit, a body is tortured by demons; by boiling, boot, breaking wheel, burning, crucifixion, iron maiden, rack, and a thousand other perverse techniques. The screams and cries of the tortured are nearly overwhelming. The many demons here are wholly concentrated on torturing and inflicting pain upon their suffering victims, who cry, beg, moan, and howl piteously. At the centre of the Plateau is an immense iron oven (or perhaps a forge), worked by a giant humanoid demon who seems to be made out of smouldering coals. Above the oven is a great White Throne, occupied by a great skeletal black man wearing the high Double Crown associated with Ehilm or Yelm. Below the White Throne on a rock promontory, a throng of people have assembled as if in worship.
The Forge or Oven and Throne loom ever-larger as you approach in concealment. The iron oven is truly immense, glowing red-hot. Thousands of misshapen demons pump bellows and throw fuel into the flames: the wretched souls of evildoers and those condemned to purification by the fire. Above them, the huge grotesque demon, easily ten times the size of a man, endlessly reaches deep into the oven with pincers to jab at a man-sized figure that remains completely unharmed despite the unbearable heat of the forge. The demon's back is marked with six X's incised in a triangle; it carries the oversized tools of a smith or perhaps a torturer, and its body of embers is scarred with deep black runes of Chaos and Truth. Like all the other denizens so far, it ignores your presence; laughing in cruel contentment at its loathsome work. You know it to be Ikadz, god of torture and pain, and arch-demon of Chaos. Some of your faiths believe that he is bound to cleanse the souls of the truly evil through suffering before they can rejoin the other dead. Others believe he creates that evil here. Maybe both are right. This plateau overlooks the Predark-the Chaosium, font of all Chaos, where it first seeped into the world. You have never been in a deadlier place.
Looming above the forge is the great White Throne, which now can be seen to be made of bones of every kind imaginable and many more. Here known as the Ash King, the dead Sun god remains immobile, seated on the throne made entirely of black ash; he has no eyes, no nose, no ears, and no mouth; merely the high Double Crown made of tarnished gold. On the promontory before his throne thousands of worshippers chant, sing and play music. A group of seven lesser gods face the Ash King before the crowd, gesturing in some ceremony; behind them is a stone altar atop which are two naked bodies, one a green-skinned male human body with hints of fins, bleeding from many wounds and crying out in woe, and another a dark troll female, also wounded but motionless, tangled in shadowy bonds.
And now you can See with your heroquest sight: you recognize the 7 “lesser gods”, who wear masks of their own heroquest! They are a Vadeli band: 2 Blues (icy male and corpse-blue-like female), 2 Red and 3 Brown Vadeli, coruscating with magics but heavily distracted by the ritual they are conducting. Boamund watches them as you prepare an ambush, and gets some understanding of what they are doing-it is VERY BAD! They are attempting to heroquest to trick the Yelm/Ehilm/Ash King essence to resurrect a Yellow Vadeli (long-extinct “talar”) soul into the body of the nearly dead Waertagi Sivis (captain), revivifying her, using the Kogag (Uz/Black Fleet) captain's soul as fuel. And it is going well so far…
But then you spring your trap, having had the benefit of being able to approach in concealment, the Vadeli being totally distracted, and plenty of time for you to prepare your best tricks. Fraud peers at the Vadeli with Soul Sight but something conceals them in a haze; he cannot see their magics at all. Shrett prepares his adamant arrow with venom and hits the Blue but it bounces off her skin harmlessly with a thunk and she seems to not even notice. Boamund disrupts her but the spell is blocked. Likewise, Fraud's Wrack Fire spell gets absorbed by a powerful Spell Resistance on all the Vadeli. But Ahappi breathes the fire of Caelaca onto 5 of the Vadeli and takes down 1 Brown, injuring 2 Reds slightly. Bog goes Berserk with plenty of magics active and hits the Blue Vadeli Ice-Age-Man but this bounces off a wall of magic behind him. You have the benefit of surprise and the Brown Vadeli dive behind the altar to take cover, but Fraud's Luathan Song cursing the Brown Vadeli finds them and you all are powerfully blessed to defeat the Browns. The Reds are backpedalling, just trying to do their best to defend the Vadeli, and one engages Bog while soon Ahappi faces another.
Yet you have the upper hand; quickly Boamund's ice-blade finds the chest of a Brown Vadeli and he drops, frozen and dying. Fraud's death-sword hews into another Brown, killing him, and Bog smashes in the head of the Red Vadeli he faces, victorious! Shrett recovers his Law arrow using his Concealment to get close to the Blue Vadeli, feeling its frigid aura. Bog, having no other foe left by him, smashes the Blue in the head, cracking his head open a bit, and this time he gets its attention! It leers menacingly, but then turns into cold mist which slithers down the rocky promontory. The Blue woman, too, turns into a shadow and flits away, with a hiss “You have transgressed! This is not over…” You do not see where they go to. But now you only face one Red Vadeli, and soon enough Fraud's death-sword slays him. In just 2 rounds, and with the Vadeli not even able to launch a single attack, you have won!
Shrett has come to the altar and inspected the dark troll, whose bonds resist the Tear-sword but eventually he and Boamund cut them off with silver swords. Fraud investigates the two wounded people and sees that the Waertagi is seriously wounded but still not near death; the troll is teetering on the brink but not under imminent threat of death if moved. So you group together to carry them off the altar. You see from the height of the rocky promontory that there is a passage hidden before from your line of sight, near the White Throne, and it descends. There is a glint there, of water? Is there light, then, too, to create such a sheen? Might you be nearing your quest's end at last?
-John
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