SJE/Session9
Session 9
In which our heroes fall to despair in the darkness beneath Gem, a fool lights the way and the past is fought.
Note that initially the Exalts in the Watch (Brand, Alana & Ravistsu) are concealing their identity from the Captain- they fear he will report them to the Wyld Hunt again if given reason. This caution handicaps their abilities as they desperately spend personal Essence and avoid anima displays.
The Watch are investigating the death by Hungry Ghost of the last Watch exorcist, 5 years ago. He died in a haunted lava tube, deep in the bowels of the extinct volcano on which Gem is built.
Having unsealed the tunnel and ventured down, they encounter long slain corpses, tortured to death. Ahead in the darkness, chanting figures resolve to become moronic zombies, their battle cry “Brains!”…
So we kick off with a fairly easy fight- the members of the Watch (even the mortals) easily trouncing the zombies. The Captains polearm decapitating 4 of the six, even Orchid rushes in to karate kick a zombie with her soft slipper. Jaq is hideously unlucky and botches with his firewand, causing it to explode in his hand! He just survives, though soot-charred and shaky. Everyone else, if happy, confident, untouched by zombie claw and bite and fearing no zombie plague infection- only Jaq is injured and then only by self infliction.
Still the Watch is no place for molly coddling and the Captain sends Jaq to scout on ahead despite his injuries. But another botch means that Jaqs eyes never quite acclimatise and he’s wandering through, the chilly, spooky, black as night lava tube, walking into walls.
So he doesn’t see the huge boulder that is rumbling down the slope over him, gathering speed as it hits the other PC’s. Exalts go flying, clipped by the boulder. Jaq’s legs are crushed beneath it, Orchid in its path of certain doom, before the Captain pushes her out of the way and takes the impact on himself!
When the dust settles and the Watch pick themselves up, they find themselves in a bad way- only Alana and Orchid are unharmed- Ravitsu, Brand and the Captain badly injured and Jaq crippled. Spirits are suddenly down and there is talk to fleeing to rest and recover.
Worse news! The tunnel behind them is now sealed by the one tonne boulder! With heavy hearts, they follow the path into shadow, deep under the mountain.
Passing the incline, from which the boulder had apparently been levered down onto them, they come into a great night-shrouded cavern. A horde of zombies lie below them, randomly shambling, but forever repeating their dread chant “Oy-yaa, Doy-ya, OY-YA, DOY-YA!” In the centre of the cavern lies a many columned temple of grey granite, bear of symbology or iconography. Two-thirds around the rim of the cavern lies another lava tube exit, set into a ledge midway up the cavern wall. To reach it, they will have to descend into the cavern below and hug the wall till the reach the narrow path leading to the exit tunnel.
But Floating Summer Orchid has not been idle. She fashions sigils, daubed to the foreheads of the Watch which will mask the smell of living brains and cause zombies to ignore the warded person.
Alana is first to test the magic (reasoning that as a Zenith, she can always break cover and invoke her anima) and she makes it through the zombie horde to the high exit tunnel. Brand follows, again successfully though they sense movement in the roof of the cavern above, and the temple is clearly the heart of a small shadowland under Gem.
Ravitsu, carrying Jaq makes a run for the exit, again ignored by the zombies. (though there is a tense moment as Jaq almost wipes the sigil from his forehead in relief!). But far above, ancient hunting eyes spot Ravitsu and recognition is made.
Swooping down from the darkened gallery above, a Hawkman, left side charred to the bone attacks with a shining and very familiar Moonsilver spear! As the spear pierces her side, Ravitsu recognises the zombified remains of her First Age body, back when he was Argent Wings, Hawk-totem Lunar who had perished in the Usurption, thrown into the molten heart of Gems then active volcano!
Somehow the body remained intact, preserved over a thousand years before being raised up by necromancy as an undead abomination!
Ravitsu too begins to change, invoking for the first time in public his own Deadly Beastman Transformation! Eagle wings spread from his back, flesh suddenly feathered, face turned beaked. Two sweeps of his mighty pinions brings him up to drop Jaq at Alanas feet by the exit, and then battle is joined, novice Eagle Warrior with the memories of a dozen past lives against the zombie Hawkman, still clutching his moonsilver direlance with a dead mans grip!
The two battle back and forth across the cavern, spear against direlance, Eagle against Hawk. Alana sees her chance and jumps from her high perch, landing on the undead Argent Wings, her dagger thrust into the hawkmans flesh, a hand hold for her in the aerial duel that follows. Jaq too throws his daggers with what strength he can muster, creating yet more handholds in the zombie-Lunars flesh for Alana to hang to!
Below, the Captain sees this aeriel ballet but shrugs in his simple-natured way. He cannot affect this battle above his head (& reach) but that temple looks interesting….
Spotting the Captain holding his nose and making his way through the still-shuffling zombie horde, both Orchid and Brand attempt to head him off. Alas Orchids botched attempt at exorcism (doesn’t work so well in shadowlands) breaks her sigil and attracts the attention of the zombies, who turn on her, sniffing “BRAINS!”
Hemmed in on all sides by zombies, Orchid falls, quickly covered by swarming zombies desperate to feast on her cerebellum and pass on the deadly zombie plague. She is surely doomed for, till Alana sees her peril and drops down from the battle of the Lunars (Ravistus unleashing a fearsome attack on her old body). Alana’s anima flares up- a column of pure golden-white sunlight that suddenly explodes outward, causing the zombies to cover their eyes and turn away from the suddenly too bright Alana and Orchid!
Meanwhile in the Temple the Captain finds a translucent, ghostly man, face ripped away on one side- the Nephwrack Keeper of the Temple. The lisping ghost invites the Captain to embrace Oblivion…
“Oblivion? I do that every night!” exclaims the Captain, thinking alcohol
“I say, ghostie-chappie, whats in the big sacophagus?” demands the still oblivious Captain.
“The Holy of the Holieth, the most valuable gift of our Great Mithtreth…” says the Keeper.
So the Captain promptly walks through the surprised ghost and rips the 400 pound stone lid from the sarcophagus, expecting gold or at least a decent wine cellar.
Instead he is surprised to see a large five foot by five-foot cage made of bone, black jade, soulsteel (some weird metal) and covered in crawling eldritch runes and sigils (funny squiggles that makes the Captains eyes water). A terrible feeling of dread and evil emnates from the cage but the Captain, mortal that he is, is a man of unsurpassed valour and holds his ground.
Brand (who has jus entered the temple) is much less fortunate. Though he cant see the cage, something in his new shiny Exalted soul recoils back from the perversion, the utter wrongness that lies in the sarcophagus. “Destroy it!” he shouts to the Captain
“Embrath your Oblivion” hisses the mostly-ignored Nephwrack as the Captain girds his loins then brings the butt of his firewand down onto the Monstrance of Celestial Portion, scoring a legendary Success! The unbreakable cage, cracks along its side and a golden flood of essence pours out, lifting pushing the Captain back at breakneck speed. Coruscating black energy gathers around the cage, blasting through rock and zombie alike, tremors setting in!
Outside, Ravistsu has just decapitated himself (or at least his former self) sending the zombie Hawkman crasing to the floor and reclaiming his artefact weapon from his old corpse!. All look up as the Captain is thrown backwards out of the now collapsing temple by golden streamers of energy. Racing down, Ravistsu catches the captain in his pinions just before he struck the cavern wall at lethal speed. Looking down, the Lunar is astonished to see the Captains forehead blazing with the Solar brand of the Dawn Caste!
However the Temple is collapsing in on itself, the roof of the cavern is falling. All flee for the escape tunnel, the crippled Jaq thrown from Exalt to Exalt. Brand and the Captain alike are almost lost in the expanding cloud of dust and rubble racing after the fleeing party. Sure footed Alana yanks Brand out of the avalanche, but the Captain nearly lost till, (with a sigh) Orchid once more tries to repay her life-debt to the Captain and races back, pushing him out of the way of a falling boulder and saving his life.
As the tunnel collapses around them, they run for the sunlight ahead, emerging inches ahead of the collapse into the caldera lake in the crater of the volcano! Somehow they have traversed all the way through the side of Gems volcanic home. High above them, on the Peak stands the Despots Palace, with its commanding view, though fortunately none would be likely to see our anima flaring, mix of solars and Deadly Beastman Lunar with Moonsilver dire lances!
Outside the party pick themselves up and rest in the crater of the extinct volcano. A tremulous and still broken-legged Jaq asks for some leave, and the Captain congratulates him, mentioning something about commendations. Orchid, the tension and threats to her life suddenly over, throws a hissy fit, stamping her small foot at the unfairness of it all and how things were supposed to be different, and less lethal and a lot less dirty! Then she hands in her resignation, dated for a years time which the Captain blatantly ignores.
Ravitsu launches into telling the Captain of his new role in Creation “Welcome Bronze Tiger, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. You join your scions here in setting Creation to rights. Alana and Brand are like you- demigods of the Lord of Heaven, I myself am a Chosen of Luna, consorts and advisors to your kind!”
Brand: “Together We Fight Crime!”
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