Tim (Christophe-Joseph Pépin) calls to say that he does not wish to dine with the rest of us, as we are beneath his station. Apparently, station is unimportant when it comes to gaming, as he does indicate a high desire to show up for the game proper. Chris (Dmitri Baranov) points out, "Did you say a high desire? Perhaps Tim has been taking too closely after the behavior of his overly-medicated character." Chuck (Quent Lawrence) protests, "Hey! These session summary intros are always down on Tim! That's completely unfair, and totally uncalled for! Some of the rest of us need to get dumped on ever so often?" Paul (Smith) pokes his head up to mention, "Can't we all just get along? Just for one session summary? It would mean so much to the children." Ernest rather flatly replies, "No. Besides, I bet Bruce is writing all of this ahead of time, so nothing in here has any relation to reality at all." Bruce just smirks.
Smith asks, "Have any of the rest of you seen strange squat figures moving around at night? The laborers think they're desert ghosts!"
Dmitri Baranov becomes alert. "What! Desert goats? Let's stick a skewer through one and roast it!"
Smith clarifies, "Ghosts, not goats."
Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez suggests, "Mister Russian, perhaps you should ease up on your customary bedtime tankard of turpentine."
Quent Lawrence comments, "I've never heard of desert goats, but the laborers say that the Egyptian is insane and is forcing the laborers to work long hours. As much as two or three hours a day..."
Sanchez offers, "You should stop talking to the proletariat."
Christophe Joseph Pépin reports that he's heard the plague is rampant in Criqueronde.
Baranov, who had been thinking of heading into town to get some roast goat at Eliane's, replies, "Then let's stay out here instead."
Pépin and Sanchez trade rumors of Pépin's family over a bottle of brandy.
The characters decide that they are going to try and hunt down the so-called desert ghosts. Quent camouflages Smith as a rock, then heads out to patrol in the darkness. Baranov finds himself a good sentry point outside the camp and just watches. Sanchez sits in a tent and watches from edge of the camp. Everyone else sits by the fire and drinks.
Then Quent calls out to the others in tones of alarm. Baranov is first on the scene. He finds that Quent has sprained his ankle in some kind of hole in the ground. Sanchez runs up to see the two of them doing something very strange. He tells them, "Come, if you are done with your object lesson of learning the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground, let's come back to camp."
Baranov tells the Spaniard, "We're going to be overrun by bug people in a second!"
Out in the darkness, Smith reminds the others, "I'm a rock!"
Baranov urges, "Let's go after them now!"
Sanchez tells the big Russian, "You'll look good once you've been skeletonized! Seriously, let's go back to camp and look for them in the morning."
Quent says, "Let's go back to our original plan!"
The characters head back to camp, having decided to wait until daylight to track the urgu-subur.
Baranov asks, "What was our plan?"
Pépin mentions, "My plan is to learn whist from the German."
Quent has little trouble picking up "desert ghost" tracks. He concludes that there were maybe ten of them around the trap that got him. Quent mentions, "I need another pistol." Baranov hands him one.
Smith suddenly exclaims, "I know what these are! These are the things that ate my creator!"
Sanchez is incredulous, "It took ten of these things to dig one pit? They must be like crazed rottweilers!"
Baranov is becoming exasperated. "That's what I've been saying all along!" Then Quent searches the area and finds about fifty traps. It becomes clear why there were ten urgu-subur wandering through the area. Baranov muses, "Why did they trap this area? I remember something about herd animals."
Quent agrees, "Yep. Them things are about due."
Sanchez offers, "Maybe we could trade with them? Perhaps arrange for a barrel of barbecue sauce from Criqueronde?"
Baranov looks at Sanchez in shocked disbelief. "What! They killed and ate an entire Legion patrol! Except for me, of course."
Sanchez, "What, these guys exactly? My Russian friend, I think you are condemning an entire race for the misdeeds of a criminal minority." Baranov acts like he cannot hear what Sanchez is saying.
Quent calls a halt. Pépin ignores him and falls into a mine shaft. Smith extends his new blade so he can climb out. Sh-clang! Pépin requests, "Could someone pass down my spare pair of pants?" The others pass him down some rope instead.
Baranov's plan is to wait until the urgu-subur come out to collect their goats, then shoot them.
Quent counts tracks and asks the others, "Think of a number." He takes a count of the amount of ammo the characters have. Then he tells them they need more ammo. Baranov decides, "I'm going back to camp."
Sanchez comments, "We might not be happy about our populations of killer giant gophers, but I bet they keep the bug people away."
Pépin suggests that the stories of mines being shut down in Criqueronde and plague among the Legionnaires might be because the mines punched into the upper reaches of the mole-man empire, which responded by killing a lot of Legionnaires.
Sanchez exclaims, "We must go back and save Catherine Iphegenia!"
Baranov's voice is a barely audible grunt, "Oh, they'd never eat her. She's too pure. Gmpnh."
Quent tells the others, "By the way, I estimate about 500 urgu-subur. And the Martian wiener dog migrations start in four or five days." The characters decide that they're probably not going to get attacked by urgu-subur right away, if they haven't already been.
The characters return to camp completely convinced that they're going to scheme themselves up a nifty urgu-subur-killing machine with flails and knives and huge smoky boilers, but their commitment is easily derailed by the Egyptian, who asks them to help him in his artifact hunt.
The Egyptian explains that the native Xea-Osk laborers are unwilling to venture far into the Emperor Tower without a human along. Ever since he was badly injured by the patchwork clockwork up on the 20th floor, he hasn't been able to act as a trailblazer. His operation is slowly grinding to a halt. He wants the characters to venture into the upper reaches of the Emperor Tower, clearing the way for the laborers to follow.
Pépin rather disinterestedly yawns, "Sure, sure. How hard could it be? We've pretty much seen the entire interior of the tower already, haven't we?"
The Egyptian points out, "There are at least sixty floors in the Emperor Tower. You've only seen the lower third of the place."
Both Sanchez and Baranov click into attention. Sanchez exclaims, "Dios mio! How tall is this thing? It must be taller than the Great Pyramids! It must be taller than the tallest structure on Earth! I had no idea!" Baranov and Quent engage in some quick calculations and verify that yes, at almost three hundred meters the Emperor Tower really is taller than any structure on Earth.
Baranov muses, "Apparently these Xea-Osk were a lot more sophisticated than I'd given them credit for. I had thought that they were little more than trumped-up savages."
Quent joshes back, "You need to start paying more attention to your surroundings, my hairy Russian friend! I've known that the Xea-Osk civilization once ascended to dizzying heights all along." Pépin strongly suspects that the Englishman is looking quite smug.
The characters agree to the Egyptian's request. After a brief interval of gearing-up and drinking, they march into the Emperor Tower and head up the stairs. They encounter little of lasting interest through the mid-30's, though Smith continues to clank in delight every time he sees the tracks of a rekel-chucul. "Look! Look at how far this one can jump! I think it jumped almost ten feet, and took a luki-ektok in flight!"
Baranov mutters, "I don't care if he makes pets of those things, as long as they do their remarkable jumps onto his face and not mine."
The characters' amusing banter is suddenly interrupted on the 38th floor when Smith and Baranov find themselves faced with a veritable horde of club- and spear-armed urgu-subur. They quickly take a defensive stance and commence the grim job of mowing down attackers. Behind them, Quent draws his pistol and prepares to fire. They almost don't realize when Sanchez squeaks, "Yeep! Little help!"
Pépin turns around to see Sanchez bravely standing off a second horde, armed with nothing more than a small coat hanger and an ottoman. He exclaims, "Sacre bleu!" and thinks about how he's definitely going to order the veal the next time he's eating at the Water Lily Club. Then the hallucinations pass and he realizes that the coat hanger is actually Sanchez' rapier, and that the little Spaniard really is using it to hold off a truly surprising number of creatures. He draws a pistol and blazes away in a surprisingly ineffective effort.
By now, the characters have come to understand that they are facing a terribly strange foe. Their attackers have the look of urgu-subur, but their decayed appearances and terrible smells give away their deceased status. Even without that, they attack maniacally, with no sense of self-preservation. And while pistol bullets tear holes in their bodies, they do nothing significant to slow them down.
Baranov is the next to make a terrible discovery. He wades over the growing pile of shattered bodies Smith has been generating, then notices that a strange swollen part on one of the "dead" zombies' backs is still moving. He watches in dismay as a small metallic body surrounded by a whirlwind of whipping tentacles pulls itself away from the carcass with a corrupt slurping. One of the tentacles moves towards him, and his limbs start to deaden. He reacts instantly, smashing the creature into a spray of metallic bits with a single axe strike.
Sadly, Baranov is so engrossed in eliminating the first of the parasite clockworks that he doesn't notice a second one off on his flank. It curls its foul tentacles around his body, paralyzing him in an instant. He looks worried. Then Smith notices the problem and tries to cut the thing off. Quent watches in disbelief as Smith misjudges the distance and chops Baranov almost in half instead.
At this point, Pépin realizes that there is a medical emergency and that he must become involved. He decides to rely upon that well-known surgeon's tool: the gun. He shoots the thing twice, destroying it and allowing Baranov's body to slump formlessly down.
Sanchez notices the activity going on behind him and figures out what to do. He has already noticed that the zombies can sustain any number of rapier hits. He moves to flank one and strikes at the parasite on its back instead. He is quite gratified to see the host collapse like the dead thing it is as soon as he destroys the parasite. He follows up on his initial success by elegantly disarming another zombie, wryly commenting, "No more two-hex reach attacks for you, my pulstulant friend!"
Pépin pulls Baranov back out of danger and brings him back to consciousness with a quick selenium infusion. Baranov promptly rushes into a berserk rage and starts smashing parasites. Nobody feels any interest in stopping him.
Quent moves into close combat with one, using judo. Sanchez observes this operation and asks, "What, are you looking for the ovipositor so you can swallow it?" Quent demonstrates his mastery of obscure Xea-Shvet martial arts by grappling and throwing the zombie into one of its companions. Both creatures go crashing to the ground. Sanchez decides that Quent might not be totally insane; he follows suit and moves up close to another so he can smash the parasite with his main-gauche, a plan that works swimmingly. They evolve a combination strategy: Quent knocks a zombie to the ground, and Sanchez guts the parasite on its back.
Baranov finally runs out of things to smash, so he attacks Smith. Smith hadn't been expecting that, so he takes quite a bit of damage. Sanchez notices that Baranov's rage trajectory is coming dangerously close to the other characters and comments, "Hey, Pépin! Could you go chloroform him?"
Quent offers, "I could try the Martian judo sleeper hold. Hand me my musket..."
Sanchez objects, "Hey! Why don't you drag that zombie you're grappling over to the Russian! Every one he kills gets him another control roll!"
Sanchez backs away from his zombie and yells, "Baranov! They're overrunning us!" Baranov obliges by charging and obliterating a zombie, then recovering from his rage.
Finally, all of the Martian zombies are down. Pépin goes around healing people. Baranov and Smith are the worst injured, but Sanchez took a nasty scratch. He notices that Pépin treats it with a selenium-infused poultice and comments, "That was a 75 Lv band-aid! Next time, could you just give me a band-aid and 70 Lv?" Pépin declines to answer.
Sanchez pokes one of the destroyed parasites. It flies apart in a spray of clockwork bits. Sanchez screams like a little girl.
Baranov suddenly realizes that he knows about these things. The so-called parasites are actually a type of clockwork called a khalgun-gatat. They come in three varieties: eka (bronze), gannau (iron) and wev (copper). All of them are built to inhabit and operate dead organic bodies. They can also paralyze living creatures with an aetheric field generated by their tentacles.
The khalgun-gatat eka are the least sophisticated, originally intended for brute physical labor. They are not very self-willed, and require a nearby supervisor to order them around. Baranov indicates that the creatures the characters encountered were of this type. The khalgun-gatat gannau were built as soldiers and bodyguards, and are substantially more impressive. While khalgun-gatat eka tentacles are quite weak, those of a khalgun-gatat gannau are strong enough to overpower an average gukin-lugal male. They are able to fortify their hosts, making them significantly stronger than they were while alive. They are also more self-motivated than the khalgun-gatat eka, but they still require a supervisor nearby. The khalgun-gatat wev were constructed as the supervisors: they are much more intelligent, and are able to think and plan. Fortunately, they are not all that physically strong.
The characters note that the body shape of a khalgun-gatat makes it ideal as a sentry: one of them could clamber along the outside of the Emperor Tower, and is small enough that a watcher on the ground would be unlikely to see it. They speculate that there must be some additional khalgun-gatat around acting as sentries.
Pépin assembles a barrelful of clockwork bits to impress Uncle Ignace later on.
The characters search the floor for artifacts, and more khalgun-gatat. Quent finds a rusted textured cup worth 1.5 Lv. Smith finds a pristine intricate goblet worth 700 Lv. Quent looks at Smith's find and offers, "Hey, I'll trade you this ribbed cup for it!"
Pépin indicates that he is interested in collecting the venom from the shattered clockworks, just in case it might come in handy later. Quent asks Pépin what it is; Pépin explains that it is very toxic. He tells the others, "Everyone take a canteen you don't use much, label it well, and collect this stuff!"
Quent points out, "We're in a desert. I use all my canteens."
Sanchez collects some. Then he takes a clockwork tentacle and risks his life by giving Baranov a wet willy.
Quent and Pépin examine the urgu-subur bodies. They decide that there are two groups: old and new. Some of them look to have died a long time ago, while others are still juicy. Quent tracks the mob and finds out that it came from upstairs very recently. Like within the last few minutes.
The characters head down to the 20th level to recuperate and to give Pépin and Smith a chance to repair. Pépin is swiftly reduced to simply handing wrenches and whatnot to Smith while he works on himself. It takes them about two hours to fix him.
With everyone back to moderate health, the characters head back up to the 45th level They find themselves in a large central hall. The floor is inlaid with astrological symbols. A midden pile slumps against the far wall.
Quent and Baranov immediately realize that there is something different about this floor: it isn't covered in sand and dust, something (khalgun-gatat) has been tracking footsteps across it. They are still studying this phenomenon when the characters are attacked by four khalgun-gatat gannau. Pépin, who had moved to the center of the room to avoid attack, finds himself caught vulnerable in the open and surprised. Smith saves his bacon by interposing himself between Pépin and the khalgun-gatat.
The fight is brief, but develops one additional interesting feature when a khalgun-gatat wev in armor shows up, armed with a mab-yetso, a Martian firearm able to fire three shots in succession. The creature manages to gravely injure Pépin with one shot before the others chop it to pieces. After the creature has been rendered harmless, Pépin announces that he wants the gun and the dozen rounds of ammunition in the creature's pouch. Baranov takes the khalgun-gatat's bronze cuirass.
| TL | Weapon | Damage | Acc | Rng | Wt | RoF | Shots | ST | Bulk | RCL | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4+1 | Mab-Yetso | 3d+2 | pi+ | 600/1800 | 8/0.05 | 1 | 3 (15i) | 10 | -8 | 3 | 50 Lv |
The session ends with the characters on the forty-fifth floor of the Emperor Tower, recovering from their encounter with the khalgun-gatat gannau and khalgun-gatat wev. Each character gains four experience points