We all get back to normal today. Everyone shows up, though Tim (Serpentine) and Paul (Kumar Singh) are obsessed with monkeys armed with muskets. Bruce (Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs) is obsessed with the Bistro Down the Alley. Chris (Michael Sangaree) and Mike (Jack Smith) swiftly become obsessed with the Georgetown Red Poppy Festival, which they tacitly assume is actually the Georgetown Opium Festival. Chuck concurs...
As a helpful side detail, Chuck explains that the shock staves can fire once per turn. They inflict 6d damage, soaked with a Resistance+Stamina roll. They work on a wireless energy grid, so they don't work outside the fortress.
The characters start the session looking down into the great Sarcophagal Chamber of the Demon Gods of Urighu. The priests have already captured both Mycroft Horatio Pulfrey-Downs and Subekhatan, all of their surviving goons, and the remaining MKS soldiers. It is obvious that the priests have a terrible fate in mind for their prisoners.
The characters swiftly hatch a clever plan. Serpentine will sneak down into the Sarcophagal Chamber to first negotiate with and then set free all of our various enemies. He will attempt to convince them that everyone should ally (at least temporarily) to fight against the Demon Gods. To back up his arguments, the other characters send him with four spare shock staves. He gets the job because he is both stealthy and able to talk to people. Everyone agrees that sending Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs would be an incredible disaster.
Serpentine decides to talk to Mycroft Horatio Pulfrey-Downs first. He asks, "So, if your brother got all of the hinky genes, why are you the one in the cage?" Pulfrey-Downs responds, "Because I got here first..." Serpentine continues on, "We need you to help us take out all of the priests. My plan is to give you a stun rod and lockpicks so you can start freeing your men." Mycroft Horatio is hardly impressed by Serpentine's idea. He scoffs, "What you suggest is elementary tactics at best. Do you think this is the first prison I've broken out of? Now Dartmouth, that was a real prison." However, Mycroft Horatio obviously wants the shock staff and lockpick Serpentine is offering, so he agrees to make a gentleman's agreement with the vigilante.
Subekhatan is next. Serpentine sidles up to his cage and sneers, "So, what's your plan to escape, Brunderspeck?" Subekhatan sputters, "That name is dead to me! I am Subekhatan! I am the sacred crocodile! I am the ancient hunger! I am the spirit of the Nile!" Serpentine responds, "You are the one stuffed into a cage like a parrot." Subekhatan visibly deflates. He explains that his plan is to persuade the locals that he is one of them. Serpentine senses that he is willing to sell out everyone else, including his own men, to this end. But even in the face of this sort of thought process, Serpentine soldiers on. He tells Subekhatan, "Look, we've been enemies for a long time and I don't want to see anyone else kill you. I'm going to give you a gun and a lockpick. Don't break out until you get the signal, and no backbiting until the common enemy is dead."
Serpentine has much better luck talking to the MKS guys. Their highest-ranking surviving officer is a rather demoralized-looking Major who explains that he has broken out of French prisons before and is quite willing to follow Serpentine's plan. He gives his word of honor as a Prussian and a Junker that he will help Serpentine fight the Demon Gods. Serpentine gives him two stun rods and the rest of the lockpicks.
He returns to the characters, using the Claws of Apepi to clamber up to the balcony. He assures the others, "I've armed four of them, including the two dangerous ones, and I've given them lockpicks. I just forgot to tell them the signal." Kumar Singh bats Serpentine on the head.
At this point, the head priest motions and two guards head over towards Mycroft Horatio. Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs notices that his brother is perhaps only moments from being converted into a subhuman savage and cautions the others, "Let's wait a moment to see what happens..." Michael Sangaree is having nothing to do with this. He tells the British scientist, "No way! If we're not going to let the others get killed by these guys, then we're not going to let them kill your brother. You're going to have to kill him yourself." Pulfrey-Downs sighs and chambers a round into his Garand.
Serpentine and Kumar Singh can hear that Mycroft is trying to persuade the priest to let him and his men go. He is offering the location of the rest of the Gems of Urighu in trade. The priest doesn't appear to be buying. However, the characters take this as an excellent signal to start shooting. At this point the opposition includes:
Most of the characters' allies are stuck inside cells:
Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs starts the hostilities as Serpentine and Kumar Singh clamber down from the balcony to engage the guards at the cells. He tries to shoot the guard on the far side of Mycroft Horatio with his Garand, but to his dismay he catches his thumb in the breech of the gun instead. He takes a level of damage.
Jack Smith and Michael Sangaree stand beside Pulfrey-Downs and open fire with considerably more effect. Jack Smith guns down one of Mycroft Horatio's guards, allowing him to evade the second guard and take cover near the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. Several guards and priests notice the incredible flash of Smith's gun and respond with a barrage of shock stick beams. Smith takes it like a man, barely even noticing the attacks.
Kumar Singh and Serpentine fall upon Mycroft Horatio's other guard. Kumar Singh soaks up all of the guard's parries. Then Serpentine rips the fellow in half. They barely even slow down, even after the high priest opens fire on Kumar Singh, making him just a trifle dizzy.
The guard's blood and viscera still staining their boots, Kumar Singh and Serpentine launch themselves into the priest all-out as Jack Smith and Michael Sangaree send bullets all around them. The priest evades most of their attacks, then turns his freaky mind powers on Serpentine. Serpentine suddenly realizes that Kumar has been his life-long enemy. Kumar Singh asks, "Would this be a good time to spend three Inspiration to have the high priest get knocked in the head by a piece of debris kicked up by Jack Smith's missed shot?" He compromises by spending only one Inspiration to summon up a montage sequence to the tune of "Memories" to persuade Serpentine that the two of them have been as close as any two human beings have ever been. Serpentine is almost brought to tears by the touching recollections of getting drunk with Nazis in a beer hall, slaughtering Egyptians in Cairo, driving a stolen tank through Berlin, and so on. The priest is dismayed to see Serpentine shake off the effects of the mind control power. He is even more dismayed when Jack Smith puts a bullet into him. He staggers from the impact. Then turns to see Serpentine coming at him, his eyes red and his face black. Serpentine cuts the high priest practically in half with the Claws of Apepi.
Michael Sangaree tries zapping various guards and priests with his borrowed shock staff, but has little impact upon his targets. He decides that perhaps shooting people isn't as much his forte as he had thought, and that his true gifts might lie in opening cages. He makes his way down the balcony and over to the captives, where he decides to try and free Subekhatan by shooting the lock off his cage.
He approaches the cage and yells at Subekhatan, "Egypto! Stand back and I'll shoot open your lock!" BANG! The lock is shattered, but the door is unharmed. Sangaree is deeply, deeply upset. He is so upset that he calls upon the powers of his Destructive Inspiration and shoots the nearest guard in the head, killing the man instantly. The distraction allows Subekhatan enough time to use his lockpick on the door, freeing himself. Michael Sangaree thinks about heading back to the balcony for a sulk.
Unnoticed on the other side of the chamber, the seated priests have been chanting in low voices. Suddenly, everyone realizes that they have been up to something. Suddenly, resonance strikes! Suddenly, everyone in the room who isn't a Demon God takes one level of bashing damage! Everyone gains new appreciation for the power of song.
Jack Smith responds by opening fire at one of the priests. Pulfrey-Downs swiftly follows his lead. They discover that in addition to chanting like Stevie Wonder, the priests also wear bulletproof robes. Curse them!
Just to add another complication to the scene, the two lizard wranglers let their charges loose some time ago. As luck would have it, the lizards were closest to Mycroft Horatio, and had spent most of their attention trying to pick him off of the sarcophagus. Having run out of nearby guards, Kumar Singh decides that killer lizards would make a reasonable second choice. He remembers (with only minimal prompting) that they don't dodge. He takes four attacks. He manages to do nine levels of lethal damage. The lizard still stands. It responds to this new problem by slashing viciously at Kumar Singh, who staggers back wounded. Then Pulfrey-Downs helps out by shooting the lizard twice. The creature twitches, then falls on top of the little Sikh. Kumar Singh groans, "It's not dead yet, but it is incapacitated!"
Nobody notices as the second lizard takes a bite out of Horatio Mycroft. If they had, they probably would have cheered it on. Horatio Mycroft decides that he's had enough, so he goads the lizard into attacking Pulfrey-Downs up on the balcony instead. Pulfrey-Downs is upset. And he has no ammo left in the Garand, so he opens up with the briefcase SMG. He does 4 levels of damage. This doesn't stop the lizard, but does annoy it. Whereupon Jack Smith blows the lizard into the next world.
Smith and Pulfrey-Downs are holding a brief celebration of their victory against the last killer lizard when the now-berserk lizard handler shows up to interrupt. Something large and heavy hits Pulfrey-Downs, knocking him off his feet. It takes him a moment to realize what happened. "The bastard threw my brother at me! How dare he!" While Pulfrey-Downs complains, Kumar Singh moves in on the lizard handler and cleans him up very nicely.
With most of the other opposition gone, the characters turn to chopping the priests into bits. This is something of a race against time, as there are a lot of priests and ever so often they let another wave of resonance loose, inflicting more damage on everyone in the area.
During this process, Subekhatan runs over to try and pry some of the gems out of the floor. Serpentine complains, "These villains are worthless! What were we thinking! This whole free-the-villains think isn't working out all that well..." As if to punctuate Serpentine's complaint, Mycroft Horatio picks himself up and runs away.
Michael Sangaree decides that he isn't the sort of person to let this sort of thing go. He puts a fresh clip into his gun and heads over to Subekhatan. The villain is hunched over the mosaic, completely engrossed by the Gem of Urighu he is prying up out of the floor. Sangaree indicates, "I can't see his eyes, so I'll unman him with this shot." BANG! Sangaree shoots Subekhatan in the jewels. This is enough to "maim" him. Kumar Singh looks up from eviscerating another of the priests to comment, "Wow. You've started channeling psycho windling boy."
Subekhatan curls up on the floor and shrieks, "We had a deal!" Michael Sangaree walks over and shoots him in his lying tongue. Subekhatan tries to proclaims the curse of the Pharaohs against him. Sangaree's voice is icy, "You're Dutch! Be white! Go grow some tulips and wear some wooden shoes!" BANG!
Unsatisfied, Sangaree shoots Subekhatan twice more, once in each eye. Subekhatan doesn't blink anymore. He is extremely dead.
The characters hear several explosions. The floor shakes. And a section of the mosaic falls away to reveal a lava-lit void. Serpentine rather pointlessly offers, "I try to find a self-destruct button…" He quickly realizes that Sangaree has already found it: he pried up the last gem. It is terribly clear that the entire temple is on the verge of falling into the center of the earth.
Serpentine makes a heroic gesture by unlocking all of the remaining cages and freeing their occupants, except for the fanatic Subekhatan cultists who want to kill Sangaree as an infidel. Everyone runs for it.
The characters head for the tower, hoping to find the Demon Gods' super-science flying devices. On the way up, Sangaree complains, "This place is built on top of a volcano? What a terrible place for a hideout." Pulfrey-Downs corrects him, "Secret headquarters are always built on top of a volcano. Or on a fault line."
The characters find that the flying machines are very phallic-looking rocket-cycles. They are also powered with broadcast power, so they won't work outside the valley and will stop running if the tower is destroyed. They take off with a crowd of former prisoners following them and rise up until they can reach the Flying Dutchman hovering high above the valley floor. Once on board the Dutchman, Michael Sangaree sets a course for New York and home. Behind the dirigible, the Temple of the Demon Gods of Urighu collapses into fire and smoke.