Ernest (Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez) reminisces, "I used to really love Bill Murray movies. He was soooo dreamy..." Paul (Smith) offers, "You should stop doing that, because it's creeping me out." Chris (Dmitri Baranov) tells everyone, "Look what I just picked up off of www.harold-ramus-nude-all-the-time.com!" He reaches into his bag. Chuck (Percy Winston-Smythe) squeals in horror and recoils. Bruce sits back and chuckles, confident that he is sitting square in his non-lucid sweet spot.
The characters are none too surprised to discover that Christophe Joseph Pépin has gone off into his happy place after his mind-stressing efforts at bypassing the urgu-subur aetherform generator. On the plus side, Percy Winston-Smythe suddenly screams out, "Aaah! The mechanical monstrosity moved! It moved!"
Dmitri Baranov notes with satisfaction, "The Englishman is screaming. I think everything is going pretty well now."
Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez disagrees, "Actually, my little Russian friend, it appears that Smith has come out of his quiescence. You see? He moved again!"
Percy Winston-Smythe shudders and curls himself up into a little ball of irrational terrors.
Christophe Joseph Pépin examines the urgu-subur symbols carved into the doorway before the characters and suggests, "I think we should all stop dwelling upon whatever substandard grade of opium we might have consumed last night and get a move on. Labor of Workers' Love has already been waiting around three hundred years for us to explore it, and it might get impatient if we don't get to it soon."
Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez replies, "We Spaniards are familiar with the labors of love."
Dmitri Baranov disagrees, "We Russians know that there is no love in labor."
Percy Winston-Smythe recovers from his fright to correct the others, "We Protestants know that love is labor."
The characters head down to the Labor of Workers' Love. The corridor leads downward, past some nonfunctional aetherform generators. Baranov announces, "Pépin will do the disassembling! He's expendable!" Everyone else stays hunkered down behind piles of rock waiting for him to finish, one way or another.
Pépin agrees to try his hand at one of the aetherform generators. The others hear him report, "I've got it! Oh, wait! Woah! Woah!" There is a burst of strange lambent light. The characters feel a pressure, but not a physical pressure. Baranov's light goes out, then turns back on. He peeks up to see that Pépin is still alive, and apparently fascinated by the guts of the generator.
Baranov deciphers Pépin's excited babbling and relays to the others, "So the stick thing creates an aetherform that will burn you, but to turn it on you have to step on something the size of a manhole cover. These aliens are fucking retarded."
It is established that taking an aetherform generator out requires a hit to the base of the staff, a place with DR5 or 6.
The characters continue down the corridor. Baranov remains interested in the occasional aetherform generator. Winston-Smythe reminds him, "Watch your cornhole, bub!" The others see debris on the ground, including a small chitin breast-piece, about three inches across. Sanchez tells the others, "Ohh, little baby morlocks are so cute!" He picks it up, only to see it fall apart like an old horseshoe crab shell. Sanchez starts scanning for morlock younglings to terminate.
The group enters into a larger cavern. Sanchez spots a glowing pool of water and throws a rock into it. There is a scurrying all around. Everyone draws pistols. Sanchez warns everyone, "Watch your cornholes, boys. There's something alive in here. Advance formation delta, five-meter spread. No sound."
Smith asks the Spaniard, "What are you talking about? I advance boldly!"
The characters observe various ancient artifacts, including a piece of equipment that is dripping glowing blue liquid into the pool. Some of them think that it looks like an incubator.
And then Smith gets swarmed by about fifty small soft-shelled insect-things. He squashes a couple of them without trouble. Sanchez starts firing.
Pépin looks around and sees several more swarms heading towards the characters. He suggests, "Tuck your socks into your boots! I don't think it's just me that's seeing these! This time!"
Baranov tries dipping an axe head into the blue glowing water. It comes back glowing blue. He has great doubts that this improved its lethality any.
Sanchez leaps onto a workbench and starts blazing away at the nearest swarm. Blam! Blam! He takes out two.
Winston-Smythe draws a saber and wets himself. The baby morlocks swarm him, and he faints. He kills one as he falls on it.
Smith looks around and asks, "Do I have anything flammable? I'd like to burn them up."
Baranov tells him, "I'm going to throw you my peanut butter. That should bring them in." Then he gets swarmed and goes berserk so he doesn't need to make fright checks. He steps into the puddle and slashes twice. He inflicts truly overwhelming amounts of damage, given that these things only have two hits each.
Pépin decides that Smith's flammable-objects idea is pretty good. He modifies an eternal lantern to explode in a 2-hex radius while Klaus Heigen helps him out by stabbing bugs and preventing the both of them from being skeletonized.
Sanchez notices that the bugs are very enthusiastic about the blue liquid. He observes that Baranov has just walked into the blue glowing pool and tells the others, "Looks like Baranov just rolled himself in heroin at a junkie convention. There goes my plan of diving in after him." He goes with plan number two and runs for it. Then another swarm overwhelms him and he faints. He gets a quirk.
The bugs go into overdrive on Baranov in the pool. Pépin muses, "Let's see how many seconds it takes for those things to skeletonize a Russian." Pépin does his flamethrower lantern trick and wipes out one of the swarms facing Baranov. Baranov notices that he gets +1 to hit now, and obliterates the other swarm.
Winston-Smythe comes around, still screaming. Sanchez observes, "This just doesn't appear to be Winston-Smythe's day."
Smith decides that he's tired of being swarmed by bugs. He gets out his snack-canister of phlogiston and pours it over himself, eliminating two swarms of bugs. Whoosh!
Winston-Smythe takes careful aim at the leaking incubator reservoir and fires. He coats himself in blue-dripping alien barbecue sauce. Baranov comments, "The Englishman is so brave. To save us he coated himself in marinade!" Winston-Smythe notices that he now feels relentlessly tingly. Pépin notices that Winston-Smythe's hair is growing very, very fast. And the bugs go insane on him.
Heigen runs over to help Winston-Smythe. He stabs the Englishman accidentally. As usual.
Winston-Smythe screams, "I'm still conscious! I know Heigen stabbed me!"
Pépin tries selenium-based first aid on Winston-Smythe. For some reason, it has a lot more of a kick than it normally does.
Baranov notices that his boots are sealing up onto his feet. Pépin cuts them off for him. He finds out that Baranov has really amazing toenails, and stupendous hair on his legs.
Meanwhile Sanchez continues firing at random at solo bugs. Baranov yells, "Smith! You need a hand?"
Smith replies, "NO! I'm doing fine here!" Squish. Squish. Squishsquishsquish.
Pépin decides that the blue stuff is vitalis. He captures some of it in his expended eternal lantern, sealing it up with a bit of leather. Winston-Smythe asks, "Vitalis? Isn't that a villain on Buffy? Looks like there's no more urgu-subur here, I say we loot this place. But we can't bring our ship in here without the Dutch authorities asking why."
Baranov suggests, "Let's wait until the natives exterminate the fort, and then bring the ship in once there are no surviving witnesses."
Sanchez, "But remember that when this place gets overrun it isn't going to be by ssaug, it's going to be by predators."
The characters decide that their best course of action is to return to the fort to get phlogiston grenades and shotguns.
Winston-Smythe and Baranov are both feeling pretty starved. Winston-Smythe looks pretty shrunken as well. Pépin decides that vitalis might have some undesirable side effects.
Exploring further into the chamber, the characters find a second incubator and extract a quantity of vitalis from it. Winston-Smythe speculates that there are no urgu-subur adults around because they need some artificial help to hatch and grow. He further speculates that they might have ended up as dwarf mutants thanks to an unhealthy dependence upon vitalis. Sanchez takes the second canister of vitalis and contemplates becoming an extremely rich plantation owner.
The characters stomp back into the Dutch army camp outside and demand, "We need boots, shotguns and grenades! Now!"
"What?"
Sanchez kicks the Frenchman awake and informs him that it is time for him to wreak his social skills upon the Dutch camp. Pépin grumbles but stirs himself anyway. He comes back with three eternal lanterns. He and Sanchez convert them into six Baranov Cocktails. Pépin notes, "The funny thing about the edge, you don't realize when you've gone over until you find yourself making weapons out of lanterns."
Sanchez yells out, "Who wants a Baranov cocktail?"
Winston-Smythe replies, "Not Heigen!"
The characters end up spending the evening at the Dutch camp. Leutnant Robert asks, "So, what did you find down there?"
Sanchez tells him, "We found some weird muck down there. It dissolves people's boots. We're going to burn it off. It sucked. And there were bugs."
Baranov suggests, "If you were to find something valuable, what would you do? Perhaps you have more ambition than the last slacker who was down there."
"Hmm... Perhaps I could arrange to subvert my oath of service."
The characters have Leutnant Robert in their pocket by the end of the evening.
Pépin starts looting. He pulls a dozen nonfunctional aetherform generators out and wraps them up for transport. He also brings along some empty bottles to gather up blue liquid.
The characters move further into the complex. They encounter a room with a working phlogiston lamp and several visible pieces of equipment.
Smith finds a broken clockwork device. He doesn't understand what it is, but he does manage to fix it. It takes rotted turnip-things, chops them to pieces, batters them in 300-year old batter, and obliterates them. Pépin is entranced, and feeds an apple through it. Then he takes a bite of the crispy results and gets sick.
Sanchez prods a pile of full-sized bug parts. A swarm comes out, but is quickly dispersed with only minimal damage to Sanchez. Sanchez scolds the others, "Can we please clear the room before we start fooling with the mechanical devices?"
The characters find another pile of debris. Heigen tosses a Baranov cocktail on it and watches as the creatures burn.
Pépin tries to capture one. It ends up almost chewing his hand off before he grabs it and stuffs it in a bottle. Both the Russian and the German try but fail to get it off his hand. He coolly thanks them for their so-called assistance. Sanchez and Winston-Smythe are both laughing too hard to do anything.
The side of the chamber features two mysterious raised platforms. Rubble tossed onto them does nothing. Baranov eventually realizes that they are phlogiston-fueled burners. He is amazed that the original occupants of the warren were using phlogiston for something like cooking.
Sanchez reflects, "So, we're in the kitchen."
Baranov tells the others, "As devices go, if we bring nothing else back we're going to bring back that deep-fryer."
Nobody disagrees with him. They are far too busy watching as it disintegrates more ancient turnip-things.
Things change when Sanchez notices that there are some large armor-plated creatures moving up the corridor towards the characters. They move into a defensive stance and prepare to meet the charge. Baranov sees several of the things, plus some mikaaq swarms, coming from the front. Sanchez faces the group coming from the rear, smallsword in hand. Pépin moans, "I think I upset it by putting its baby in a jar."
Winston-Smythe takes careful aim at one and fires. His bullet glances off its shell. He mourns, "So much for that. This might be a job for the Russian."
Sanchez stabs an aukikep in the eye. Then Smith plows in and delivers a series of horrible gashing chops. Pépin finally finishes the creature with a mab-yetso shot to the eye.
Baranov backs away from two, chopping and slashing. Baranov attempts to cut the arms off the one on the right; he is surprised when it succumbs to its wounds and dies. He announces, "They have arteries in their elbows!" Sanchez throws a Baranov cocktail in and fries three swarms of mikaaq then shoots the one on the left in the eye. Pépin follows up with a shot to the creature's other eye, inflicting lots of damage. Heigen finishes it off with a shot to the skull.
There are still two swarms of mikaaq all over Baranov. Everyone else backs away while Baranov squashes the remaining swarm bugs. Then Baranov comes out of his berserk.
Sanchez offers, "I guess we're well on the way to genociding the entire population of this place."
Baranov asks, "I thought someone had Cultural Familiarity with Urgu-Subur."
Pépin speaks up, "I do!"
Sanchez tells the others, "Everyone help me hold Pépin down on one of these burners until he tells us what the fuck is going on here."
Winston-Smythe offers another plan, "Let's go into the other room while Pépin does the autopsy."
Pépin asks, "Should I use my Physiology skill?"
Sanchez is amazed, "I thought you just marketed yourself as a scientist. I didn't realize you actually had some scientific skills."
Pépin spends some time examining the innards of the dead aukikep and mikaaq. He reports to the others that both types of creature appear very similar to the urgu-subur, but still with big differences. For example, in addition to being armor-plated and three meters high the aukikep have shrunken brains and are much less intelligent than mainline urgu-subur. He suspects that they have DR 6, a lifting ST of 28 to 30, and about 24 hit points. Both varieties seem to heal fast, but then fall apart into decay quickly upon death.
Sanchez offers, "Some of these big ones would make good showpieces on Earth, stuffed. And we shot a lot of them in the eyes, so they're probably in okay shape." He suggests giving stuffed aukikep to various rulers in exchange for favors and whatnot.
Pépin objects, "It may be a bit odd for me to express moral objections, but I'm not sure how cool it is to taxidermy semi-intelligent races..."
Sanchez notices some barrels. He finds that they're full of strange moist pinkish-green slabs. Winston-Smythe elbows him and offers, "I bet you a Livre Pépin tries to eat it!"
Pépin tries to eat one. It tastes horrible, but it stays down. He tells the others, "I think this is monster chow, guys." This theory is confirmed when he feeds some of it to his new pet. The barrels look new, and made to be opened by aukikep.
There is some debate about carrying this stuff around to try and deflect monster attention. The characters decide to not carry it around: Sanchez notes that the monsters might be attracted by the stuff.
Monster chow fed into the slice-and-dice comes out looking pretty good.
Pépin spots normal-sized urgu-subur footprints around the barrels. He points this out to Baranov in the hopes of making him mad.
Nobody notices that Pépin and Winston-Smythe have wandered off into the darkness. Suddenly, Pépin comes running back screaming, "Gogogogogo! Mind control monster! Mind control monster!" Three whitish forms are following him and Winston-Smythe. Smith runs at them. Baranov follows, cautioning the others, "If they mind control me, sorry in advance!"
Smith and Baranov are able to kill the three creatures with ease. The three dead creatures are wearing equipment harnesses, simple clothing and blades similar to but simpler than the blades the characters took from the armory upstairs.
Then Baranov feels Cweshyegxuul touch his mind. He yells, "Mind control!" and runs. Smith asks, "What? I don't hear anything?" Pépin offers, "Here's a pipe. It seems if you get good and stoned it creates some interference. Everyone retreats quickly.
Once the characters have reached what they think is a safe distance, they sit down to strategize. Sanchez offers, "As I see it, we have two options. One, we take a different path. Two, we send Smith in to kill an entire city full of urgu-subur."
Baranov replies, "I have an idea what we can do. Now, parts of this are morally wrong, but we can go to confessional afterwards. We invite the Leutnant down, then we knock him out and strap explosives to him with a really long detonator cord. Then we send him across the purple line. When he gets to the big mind thing we set him off."
Smith objects, "I think this plan doesn't sound legal."
Pépin points out, "Winston-Smythe, you're missing a button on your shirt because you got possessed and it was undressing you."
Sanchez looks at Pépin with great distrust.
Pépin sputters, "That's seriously true, though!"
Smith has an interesting theory: "Maybe this was originally a city of normal urgu-subur, and they started using this magical healing stuff and it turned them into what they've become now."
Sanchez asks, "Smythe, do you remember any of this?"
Winston-Smythe admits, "I just have weird dreams."
Smith points out, "So maybe it was just Pépin who drugged him, dragged him off, and tried to seduce him? And that's where the buttons went?"
Sanchez admits, "So I'm not totally sold on the whole psychic alien monster idea."
Pépin defends himself, "But even Baranov said he felt something..."
Smith now agrees with Pépin, "And frankly Baranov is a lot more reliable.
Baranov pats Smith on the head, "That's the nicest thing anyone has said about me in the last few months. Thank you, robot!"
Pépin offers, "Did I mention that this society seems to have problems with cannibalism? Cweshyegxuul seems to be upset about the eating."
Baranov grumps, "I think when you get down to the bottom of it, it's not Christian."
Winston-Smythe protests, "It possessed me!"
Sanchez muses, "Trouble is, this isn't like a punitive raid. They're just down here. They're not running around killing Dutchmen. So killing them isn't necessarily the best plan. Now, I'm European so I'm still sort of down with the plan, but I'm not so sure what we'd get out of it. I mean, you kill Indians and ssaug and at least you can take their land."
The session ends with the characters deep in the lost city of Taekpaeq, debating what to do about the odd mental influences of Cweshyegxuul. Each character gains three experience points. Smith gets an extra point for Mechanic (Clockwork) for fixing the deep-fryer.