Paul (Smith) calls early to indicate that he's just had a very exciting preceding 24 hours and won't be attending today. Bruce promises to hold a moment of silence on his behalf, but secretly knows that he's lying. Chuck (Percy Winston-Smythe) shows up completely unaware of the hideous chicanery that is underway. Chris (Dmitri Baranov) grimaces at the thought of having a good load of page-turning saliva on his fingers. On the other hand, he waxes poetic at the behaviours of the AI in the Medal of Honor Pacific game. Ernest (Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez) doesn't know, and doesn't care. All he can talk about is learning the skinning skill. Tim (Christophe Joseph Pépin) decides that he'd be better off spending time working than listening to this sort of nonsense.
It turns out that the characters are in Bielestad, having already extracted and boxed up:
The characters are eager to make the fast transit to Mars in ten weeks, but are none too eager to head back into the lost city of Takpaeq.
Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez hears a rumor from a passer-by in Bielestad and asks the others, "What in hell is the Oosten Hoogland? It sounds like something from Doctor Seuss." He notes that three companies of infantry have landed to the south and that a shipment of palshiffan hasn't shown up from the Oosten Hoogland. "Perhaps the killing has begun. They say they're trying to find people to investigate, but nobody's taking the offer. That says to me that these problems are tree-shadow-monkey related."
Percy Winston-Smythe points out that the Ship Meister Roeland Groat is talking about putting together a convoy of ships for the transit to Mars, to avoid pirates. He's down at Michelvesting. He suggests that if the characters travel with that group they might be safe, but if they don't they might meet up with pirates. And pirates might have valuable stuff!
Dmitri Baranov points out that there are probably at least a couple of fortresses or strongpoints with cannons up in the Oosten Hoogland. He suggests that the Musaraigne d'Egrappage is only armed with a single cannon, and could certainly do with a couple more. Percy Winston-Smythe instantly approves: any plan that results in him having more access to artillery is a good plan!
Sanchez points out that the highland fortresses are probably manned only by disemboweled Dutchmen. "And the great thing is that we're not Dutchmen!"
Baranov chimes in, "We could give a whole new meaning to the term war profiteering!" He estimates that the characters could pack at least a couple of cannon into their ship's boat.
The characters decide to spend some time looking for fortresses to sack.
Before the characters depart for the frontier, Dmitri Baranov suggests that they should do something to see to the future comforts of their ssaug allies. In particular, he suggests that the characters find wives for them. Everyone agrees that this sounds like a noble plan, except for the ssaug.
Kursk replies, "Get wife? What do you mean? I already have wife!"
Heigen II offers, "I have three! And four children!"
Friday mourns, "I have no wife! I am not yet a man! I have yet to kill the super-sloth that wanders the deep forest!"
Finally, Ishmael suggests, "I have no wife. But I am interested. How do you propose to find me one?"
Baranov thinks about the problem, "We could go throw a bag over her head..."
Winston-Smythe objects, "You're not here to say these things!"
Ishmael points out, "Normally this would be arranged by the clan, but my clan is all dead, killed by the mangeurs-de-boue. If we arrange it, an acceptable wife could be had for a rifle. An excellent wife for five!"
Baranov turns to the Englishman, "How much do you like your henchman, Winston-Smythe?"
Winston-Smythe muses, "Rifles are pretty cheap. I think I can swing it."
The characters head for the military outpost at Hetstern in the Oosten Hoogland. Setting up for the expedition actually takes two weeks, what with going down the river to the ship again and collecting the wives.
Catherine Iphegenia Pépin has set up house in the Musaraigne d'Egrappage down in the bay. She has been feeding the crew a steady diet of seafood, prepared in the English fashion. The crew is divided in half: half think she is the most wonderful thing to ever leave Earth. The other half wants to kill her.
The characters notice that Catherine Iphegenia has also had an impact upon crew discipline: they notice one crewman suffering through a truly unusual punishment. The man is coated in barbecue sauce and hanging from a rope over the water. The water roils every time a droplet of barbecue sauce hits the water. Baranov comments, "I thought she'd force them to sing, not threaten to feed them to the vicious local fishes."
And in her spare time, Catherine Iphegenia has been writing Novels of Adventure.
When the characters clamber up onto the deck, she hurls herself into Sanchez' arms with a cry of, "What have you brought me?"
Sanchez is momentarily taken aback, "huuhh... uhhh... a deep fryer.." Sanchez senses that this isn't the sort of thing she was hoping for... Swiftly attempting to salvage the situation, he tell her, "There is something I've been saving for you." She gazes at him expectantly. He tells her, "Let's go below." The others look at each other knowingly, but to their surprise he gives her the childhood rag doll he got so long ago from a maid. Catherine Iphegenia shrieks in delight and embraces him. Sanchez whispers to the others, "I always plan ahead..."
Winston-Smythe calls out, "Crew! We're back! Extra ration of rum!"
The crew answers, "Yaaay!"
The characters decide that they will take an extra half-dozen crew (extra -1 Piloting penalty once boat is loaded) on the ship's boat, just in case. Smith stays behind to protect Catherine Iphegenia and to study the aetheric visionary device. He's given instructions to not talk to Catherine Iphegenia, and to not take her orders, "Because she's a woman." The characters expect that by the time they return, Catherine Iphegenia will have him wrapped around her finger.
All is finally ready. Percy Winston-Smythe takes the wheel of the ship's boat, and sends it lumbering into the sky. The ship lurches dangerously under all the extra weight of crew and equipment.
Baranov shouts over the sounds of cracking struts, "Winston! Shut up! It's demoralizing when the pilot is screaming, 'We're all going to die!' Why didn't I sleep with that Portuguese boy when I had the chance?"
Sanchez thinks a spiraling re-entry is normal, so he watches the ground. He sees a smoke plume around the fortress at Fanjan.
The Fanjan Fortress Valley
The characters are able to see several destroyed plantations along one edge of the valley floor. The beehive-shaped granaries are still burning, but everything else looks like it has already burned out. The fortress interior is gutted, though the cement walls still stand.
The characters set down in the lake, then take the rowboat up the river to the shortest land route to the fortress. They take soundings along the way to minimize the chances of accidentally grounding the ship's boat later on. Four crew are left behind on the ship's boat, armed with muskets. Winston-Smythe knows that one of them was once a poacher and is a pretty good shot, so he loans the fellow Pépin's mab-yetso. Sanchez warns the man, "If the vampire awakes, you must hand this to him." The other crew are more familiar with cutlasses, so the characters do not make a particular effort to leave them with high-grade firearms. They do leave the flare gun, with instructions to fire it if things get out of hand.
The characters disembark at a plantation dock. There are no other boats visible at all. The characters make clear to their two crewmen that they are support, and should cower behind the characters if anything bad starts happening.
The plantation looks like a disaster. Of the four beehive-shaped brick granaries, one is collapsed, while the others are still burning slowly and are too hot to touch. Sanchez dares Baranov to lick one. Winston-Smythe speculates upon who might be dumb enough to poke a hole in one of them and let some air in. Whoom!
The plantation house was built into a hill and has now collapsed into a crater.
Winston-Smythe, "Why are the outer plantations farther from the stone circle untouched?"
Baranov, "I just think it's a bad thing that the spider-monkeys know fire."
Sanchez, "At least they were smart enough to decide to genocide the Dutch."
Baranov finds some ribs, probably human. They've been cracked to get the marrow out. The Russian tells the others, "He looks like he got roasted, and eaten and then the marrow was sucked out of his ribs."
Winston-Smythe comments, "So whoever did this is using the granaries as big smokers?"
Sanchez concurs, "I thought I recognized that smell."
The characters continue on to the fortress proper. They start to encounter trouble as they approach the fortress outbuildings: a madman with a musket takes a shot at Baranov, but misses by a mile. He screams in gibberish. Sanchez sneaks up near the madman; he spots another madman in a loincloth. He decides that the man looks Dutch. He makes an attempt to clobber the guy from behind; it doesn't work, and Sanchez gets grappled for his trouble.
Baranov runs to help. And then the crazy people swarm. Baranov takes a cutlass hit. Sanchez gets grappled, then shoots his attacker in the guts after the guy tries to bite him in the neck.
The characters fall into standard routine, gunning and cutting down madmen like machines.
Heigen tries to help by attacking a madman intent upon slaughtering one of the characters' sailors. Characteristically, he stabs the sailor instead.
Sanchez reassures Pépin, "Don't worry, you'll get your character points back when we execute him." Then he moves up to the fortress, sees something and finds it terribly, terribly frightening. He stands stock-still and screams.
Pépin drops his rifle and applies first aid to the wounded sailor. Winston-Smythe hands his rifle to the other sailor, orders him to reload it, then heads after the Russian.
Baranov observes Sanchez panicking. He puts on his Riddick goggles and rushes the Spaniard. He suddenly feels like he woke from a nightmare, then realizes how ridiculous that is. He grabs the Spaniard and runs away. He curses, "Damn spider-monkeys."
Pépin suggests, "I'm thinking fire, and then we shoot them when they come out."
Baranov points out, "Trouble is, everything around here is made of mud bricks. Oh, and we're all surrounded by damp jungle."
Sanchez recovers and reports that he saw something inky and terrifying that looks like an A-Ha video. He shakes Baranov by the lapels, howling, "Psychic spider death monkey!"
Pépin, "Do you want to throw the Baranov cocktail into the blockhouse?"
The characters drag the wounded sailor and one wounded madman back into some intact shacks on the plantation. Pépin administers first aid. He finds that there's nothing wrong with the guy except that he's been shot in the leg and has been living naked in the bush for a few days. From his filthy rags, it looks like he was a soldier.
Sanchez sneaks up to the blockhouse with a Baranov cocktail. While he sneaks, the others perform overwatch. He throws, then immediately falls in fear for five minutes. Klaus Heigen spots something shadowy in the blockhouse and shoots it while Baranov grabs Sanchez and brings him back.
The characters muse that whatever is in the blockhouse is stuck in there. The characters' captive alternates between catatonia and frenzy and proves unable to provide anything most folk would recognize as "information". Sanchez theorizes that the mangeurs-de-boue sodomized the locals into paranoia then ravaged the place. Everyone else agrees this sounds plausible.
The characters scout the battlefield for resources. They pull four cavalry sabers and two single-shot pistols (both needing extensive repair) off the madmen. The fortress looks like 30 or 40 men, with four cannon, once manned it. One of them was in a structure that collapsed and is beyond salvage. The others are in good shape, including one in an earthen bunker.
Sanchez investigates the bunker further and finds that someone conducted a desperate defense there: the place is littered with cartridges, broken flints, and a fouled musket. In addition to the cannon, he finds five cannonballs, two good charges and five spoiled charges (sitting in mud).
Baranov looks at the spoiled charges and announces, "Okay! We're going to kill a monster with light!" Pépin proposes a slightly more complicated plan involving dragging a spoiled charge into the blockhouse with forty-foot ropes, then setting it off with a fuse.
Then the characters figure out that moving the cannon around to point at the blockhouse will only take an hour, and they have four hours of daylight yet. The get to wrestling the gun into place.
An hour later, they are done. Winston-Smythe aims the gun at the building. And misses. He explains to the others, "That was a bad charge." Fire two! He hits! 105 points of damage! A hole right through the blockhouse wall! Everything is silent, nothing comes out.
Sanchez suggests, "Maybe we should put a womp rat on the end of a stick and see if it freaks out."
Pépin offers, "We could use a sailor?"
Winston-Smythe points out, "That would be bad for morale. I'll go."
Pépin answers, "Okay. Have fun!"
Winston-Smythe looks inside. He yells back, "There's something dead inside!"
Pépin orders, "Shoot it!"
Winston-Smythe shoots it. "I killed something!"
The characters file in to examine the dead mangeur. They notice that it had a stack of roasted human arms in one corner. Pépin figures out that the original gunshot killed it: it bled to death afterwards.
The characters venture into the fortress proper. Sanchez finds one tower is full of dead, roasted Dutchmen, still in their clothes. Then he finds some ssaug sleeping in a shack; one is tattooed as a Dutch indentured laborer. Another has a human finger hanging from its mouth.
The characters sneak in and murder the four ssaug, plus another one outside.
Then a swarm of crazed ssaug descends upon the characters, driven by a pair of mangeurs-de-boue. The characters, particularly Baranov, chop their way through the threat, killing most of the ssaug and one of the mangeurs-de-boue. The other mangeur escapes after being shot by Pépin.
Entering the Fanjan Fortress Ruins
Pépin decides to perform an autopsy upon the dead mangeur. He is convinced that they use pheromones, even though everyone else is pretty sure they use freaky psychic powers. Pépin finds wheelbarrows to bring the two mangeur bodies back so he can taxidermy them. Baranov points out that they will swiftly start to smell, as the characters are in the tropics.
The captive Dutchman is still insane. He gets dragged along with the bodies. Baranov points out that the characters are not supposed to be here, so their ability to drop him off with the appropriate authorities is limited.
The characters return to the ship's boat. Their ssaug servants confirm that the bodies are those of mangeurs-de-boue. The ssaug don't know if the mangeurs can swim, but they do object to having the bodies on board. Pépin looks at the bodies and concludes that they don't have webbed fingers and toes, nor can they close their nostrils. He thinks they have seal-like skin to avoid fungal diseases in the jungles.
Pépin packages the bodies in separate sacks. He does nothing to preserve them.
The characters settle in for the night on the ship's boat. They make watch arrangements involving a man in the crow's nest with the flare gun.
The next morning, the characters examine the surviving plantations on the other shore. They all show obvious signs of neglect, as if nobody has been doing chores for a couple of weeks or so. Pépin calls out for survivors with a speaking-trumpet. He gets a response from one of the buildings very quickly: "You are Dutch? Thank God! There are five of us, plus three children and ten natives!"
"Do you want to evacuate?"
"Yes!"
"Do you have salt or brine? Bring it and then come to the boat, we will evacuate you."
The Dutch farmers come out and board the ship's boat. They are notably free of complaint when they realize that the characters are not Dutch. One of them asks, "You must be a scientist! What is a man of learning doing in this terrible place?"
"Stealing cannon."
The characters continue on to the second plantation, where they pick up four adults (two male, two female), five children, and eight ssaug. They leave the cannon they took from Fanjan fortress on the dock: there is no longer enough room in the ship's boat to carry it.
The third plantation the characters approach is under siege. The spokesman claims that the place is occupied by three women, two men (one wounded and one frightened) and five children. There are no servants, and not much ammunition. And there are fear-monsters hiding in the fields.
The characters debate tactics. Pépin suggests, "Let's do this mountain-climber style and tie each other together. That way, if one of us gets jumped by a monster then none of us get away."
Baranov replies, "Let's not do this. Children are notorious for being eaten by monsters."
Pépin brings out a bottle of blue-glowing vitalis. He suggests, "Everyone drinks the Kool-Aid before the death run!" Nobody takes him up on his offer.
The characters finally organize a desperate charge in to pick up the residents. They throw one of the cannon charges out the door of the plantation-house and set it off with a gunshot to cover their return. Everyone makes it back, though Klaus Heigen gets hit by a fear attack and must be helped back into the ship's boat.
The characters make a quick and edgy ship's boat trip back to Michelvesting, where they end up spending a lot of money to paper over various legal troubles and settling up with the Dutch refugee families. Baranov spends 1500 Lv on them, and visits them in jail. In the meantime he spends time with Winston-Smythe gambling and carousing.
Pépin taxidermies up his mangeurs-de-boue. One is intact, while the other is spare parts. He vivisects one of the brains, looking for signs of aetheric manipulation, but finds that he needs a few more skill points before he can learn anything of use. He spends 500 Lv on the project, much of which goes into hiring a lithographer to get a lot of images of the beasts.
Each character gains four experience points.