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The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep d20
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<blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4308093" data-attributes="member: 31465"><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Adventure #29: Huston’s Headquarters</strong></span></p><p></p><p>After interrogating the captured cultist, the party quietly dispatches him. Their main problem now is finding a place to rest. They are weary and injured, particularly Lester (as usual). They decide to find a place to camp in the dark, away from any main thoroughfares; it will be the safest option, if anything can be considered safe in these caves. But they now have three lightning guns to protect them if a Living Wind (or anything else) appears. </p><p></p><p>They set off, and a few hundred yards from the Purple Dome Plaza they stumble upon a rift. The chasm is eight feet narrow at the smallest point, and they are glad to have used flashlights to navigate the broken terrain; they could have easily tumbled to their deaths. Chad ties a rope around himself and leaps across, but the others are very hesitant. It could be a fatal drop, and they fear that a living wind might lurk in the black depths. They distantly hear the whistle of slippery motion over eons-old architecture. They set up camp on the original side of the chasm and try to get some sleep, letting Ronnie Talltree take the first watch.</p><p></p><p>It is several hours later when Lester wakes up with a jolt, and sees several bobbing lights moving away from the Purple Dome Plaza. He wakes the others, and they creep forward together to get a better look. Upon closer inspection, still hidden well within the darkness, they discern five men, four of which are Caucasian, led by an Abo with a rifle. The Caucasian men carry gurneys laden with corpses, obviously the remains of the last cultist group that the investigators annihilated. Finding this an opportunistic stroke of good luck, they quickly decide to strike from cover. Dispersing closer, rifles and lightning guns in hand, they soon unleash volleys of blue fire over the unsuspecting cultists. Hair sizzles and catches flame; clothes erupt and fire leaps from charred eye sockets, and a shotgun blast levels the leader before he even knows what happened. Only one Caucasian man survives the attack, burning as he stands, but oddly enough, he does not scream in pain, nor does he try to extinguish the fire. He burns quietly for a few moments, his flesh blackening, peeling, falls to his knees, and finally keels over.</p><p></p><p>The investigators inspect the bodies and find wallets on a few of them, offering Australian names and places of birth in Sydney, Port Hedland, and other locales. They keep the wallets for later reference. The fifteen bodies are dragged as quickly as possible to the chasm and tossed over the edge (save for one, which Chad Slambody retains for selfish and nefarious reasons). They fear that the bodies were being taken back to the "headquarters" for reanimation. The group rests for a while longer, recovering some of their strength, and when ready, they move ahead toward the distant rectangles of light.</p><p></p><p>Chad scouts ahead and finds a three story building made of wood. There's a ramp on the right side leading up, with platforms and doors at three different levels. But there's also a guard on the roof waving a bright arc light back and forth in a random sweeping pattern, obviously trying to dissuade or spot anyone approaching. The investigators realize that YES, they have made some commotion with gun shots and explosions, but the lightning gun discharges could just as easily have been from cultists fending off polyps. They discuss their options, and lacking a better, cohesive plan, Chad decides to shoot out the spotlight from the maximum distance.</p><p></p><p>Two deafening retorts later, and the glass bulb shatters into a thousand pieces and the light winks out.</p><p></p><p>At this juncture, the group debates whether they should destroy this building now and sift through the remains, or try and infiltrate it. The ringleader of this cultist operation, Dr. Robert Huston, is possibly inside, and he is no doubt a dangerous animal. Ronnie and Chad flank right while Lester and Hans move closer, but Hans soon spots a new train of cultists approach the building from the left, nearly twenty of them in a long, staggered line under the dangling light bulbs. They are still several hundred yards away, but the investigators are completely hidden within darkness. A few cultists finally reach the front of the building and enter the bottom door, while two remain as guards outside, fearfully glancing around with clubs in hand. Chad and Ronnie lope back to the others after a quick surveillance run, and soon after, the man inside comes out rolling a 50-gallon barrel down the ramp, and Chad decides to SHOOT first and ask questions later.</p><p></p><p>His aim is true, and a split second after the guards spot his muzzle flare, the barrel explodes! Yes, 50 gallons of gasoline rip off a huge, fiery chunk of the building away, spitting flame and fumes and smoke high into the air, revealing in a hell-red glow more details about the alien architecture of the city. The cultists nearby are launched away with dying screams, but part of the building facade is on fire now and the resultant glow makes the investigators visible, albeit dimly. </p><p></p><p>Furthermore, after the explosion, the screams of men and women are heard emanating from somewhere inside the wooden structure.</p><p></p><p>The investigators start popping off more shots at the approaching cultists, missing more than hitting, and with riotous cries of rage and madness, the Abo's charge their location, bat-teeth clubs lifted above their heads!</p><p></p><p>Chad, Lester and Hans rattle off a few shots but most fly wide, although a few cultists are wounded. Soon they have closed within melee range, so Hans and Lester unpack their lightning guns and level off a few devastating bursts. Electricity spits and sizzles, and amid the screams of the dead and dying, the investigators ruefully grin at each other. Their pleasure is short lived when they realize that the shock troops were just a diversion for the more lethal spellcasters in the back ranks:</p><p></p><p>Hands lifted, terrible syllables rolling from their tongues in an unknown language, four Aboriginal cultists point at the investigators and unleash withering rays of black putrescence from their fingertips!</p><p></p><p>The Shriveling spells inflict horrible damage, and are nearly impossible to dodge. Lester writhes in agony, his skin rotting where the evil touches him. Hans screams in pain is well, and naked Chad Slambody loses a nipple to the dark magic; it melts from his naked chest like hot taffy. But the vile spells do not kill the investigators, and their next round of lightning guns demolish the sorcerers.</p><p></p><p>They regroup, and almost immediately break up into separate squads to cover as much ground as possible. Chad leaps over the flames engulfing the ramp and sprints to the second floor. Ronnie Talltree follows, while Lester scouts out the line of bulbs to make sure no one else is approaching, and Hans smashes out a first floor window and crawls into the room. It is a storage room obviously, filled with heavy crates, arc lights, tins of food and water, welding equipment, drills, mining hats and rope and shovels and wheelbarrows and steel track...and THREE 50-gallon drums of gasoline!!!</p><p></p><p>The fire is spreading quickly, crackling along the walls and eaves, filling their lungs with acrid smoke and inching ever closer to the combustibles. Hans tears through the room, throwing anything of potential value out the window and into wheelbarrows.</p><p></p><p>Chad peeks furtively into the second floor door, and sees several dozen Aboriginal captives locked in cages. The stench of refuse and bodily waste is nauseating, but he enters anyway, using Ronnie as a translator. The natives are terrified, pressing to the backs of the cages, but Chad almost immediately spots a pregnant woman nearly at the brink of birth. She's in late labor, huffing and puffing on the iron grid, and Chad doesn't like the sound of that. Bad things tend to come out of the wombs of captives; Hyapatia Masters in Kenya being a prime example. He nearly shoots her dead right there, but Ronnie talks him out of it. They try to open the cage doors, even wedging a crowbar in, but the doors are strangely sealed; there's not even a proper lock. In a moment of inspiration, Chad wonders if they are magnetically closed...</p><p></p><p>Hans warns everyone that there are barrels about to explode on the ground floor, so if they're going to rescue the prisoners and search the 3rd floor, they better get it done. The group clambers to the top landing, and very, very carefully, Chad peeks in, shotgun readied to blast the head off anything that moves, especially a madman of Nyarlathotep named Dr. Robert Huston.</p><p></p><p>Inside is a living area replete with a cluttered desk, a leather swivel chair, a mound of gear and equipment, bookshelves piled high with antiquated scrolls, a kitchenette, a rumpled sleeping cot, and a shortwave radio in the corner. There's no sign of a living soul. They begin rummaging through the room as fast as they can. Hans spots a strange metal helmet on the table with electrodes sticking out, as well as a copper bowl with Mythos runes. Both are confiscated. Lester finds in the desk a heavy handwritten manuscript entitled "GODS OF REALITY" that weighs in at a hefty 600 pages. He takes it, and Chad finds hanging on the wall above the shortwave radio a strange electronic device on a leather thong.</p><p></p><p>Intrigued, he rushes down the ramp with the device and sprints into the cage room. Sure enough, the mechanism sends a mild electric charge through the magnetic locks and unseals them. Unfortunately, at about the same time, he hears a horrifying baby squeal, and sees a putrid trail of greenish blood and slime leading from the loins of the mother. Something unwholesome indeed has sprouted from her, groping toward the bars with a wobbly head full of needle teeth, barely able to move on emaciated stubby legs. Chad dispatches it with a well-placed shotgun blast and splatters demon-baby all over the prisoners in the cage.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/alive.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Free now, but unable to escape down the ramp due to burning timber and smoke, they notice for the first time a knotted rope on the back of the building. One by one everyone begins slithering down until they reach the back of the complex, which is shrouded in darkness. But Chad can't stand to leave the gasoline barrels!</p><p></p><p>Against his better judgment, he orders everyone to get the hell away from the house, and he primes a single stick of dynamite against the outer wall. If placed just right, it will destroy the wall and allow him to roll a drum of gasoline out before it explodes. And as luck would have it, the wall ruptures just as needed and the barrels are still intact, although dangerously close to the flames. Chad and Ronnie manage to get one out and they collapse to the dusty stone outside only seconds before the entire headquarters erupts into a plume of flame like a Roman candle, raining burning debris down on their heads.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/blow.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Surrounded by soot and hot ash, trembling prisoners, the crackle of flames and splintering wood, the investigators huddle in the dust and the dark, their faces bathed in red, wondering what to do next. </p><p></p><p>And there we stopped.</p><p></p><p></p><p>P.S.</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">"GODS OF REALITY"</span></p><p></p><p><em>Monday, April 21st, 1923</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Madness is the mark of the gods, the response to the whisper of ancient secrets, and the unseen hand that turns the world in its disordered course. With it, I have peered beyond mere dream and pattern, beyond childhood impetuosity and adult grief, beyond the analysis of which other men are capable. Accepting madness, I accept the gods and rule well with their gifts thereby…</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nebulous, post: 4308093, member: 31465"] [size=4][b]Adventure #29: Huston’s Headquarters[/b][/size] After interrogating the captured cultist, the party quietly dispatches him. Their main problem now is finding a place to rest. They are weary and injured, particularly Lester (as usual). They decide to find a place to camp in the dark, away from any main thoroughfares; it will be the safest option, if anything can be considered safe in these caves. But they now have three lightning guns to protect them if a Living Wind (or anything else) appears. They set off, and a few hundred yards from the Purple Dome Plaza they stumble upon a rift. The chasm is eight feet narrow at the smallest point, and they are glad to have used flashlights to navigate the broken terrain; they could have easily tumbled to their deaths. Chad ties a rope around himself and leaps across, but the others are very hesitant. It could be a fatal drop, and they fear that a living wind might lurk in the black depths. They distantly hear the whistle of slippery motion over eons-old architecture. They set up camp on the original side of the chasm and try to get some sleep, letting Ronnie Talltree take the first watch. It is several hours later when Lester wakes up with a jolt, and sees several bobbing lights moving away from the Purple Dome Plaza. He wakes the others, and they creep forward together to get a better look. Upon closer inspection, still hidden well within the darkness, they discern five men, four of which are Caucasian, led by an Abo with a rifle. The Caucasian men carry gurneys laden with corpses, obviously the remains of the last cultist group that the investigators annihilated. Finding this an opportunistic stroke of good luck, they quickly decide to strike from cover. Dispersing closer, rifles and lightning guns in hand, they soon unleash volleys of blue fire over the unsuspecting cultists. Hair sizzles and catches flame; clothes erupt and fire leaps from charred eye sockets, and a shotgun blast levels the leader before he even knows what happened. Only one Caucasian man survives the attack, burning as he stands, but oddly enough, he does not scream in pain, nor does he try to extinguish the fire. He burns quietly for a few moments, his flesh blackening, peeling, falls to his knees, and finally keels over. The investigators inspect the bodies and find wallets on a few of them, offering Australian names and places of birth in Sydney, Port Hedland, and other locales. They keep the wallets for later reference. The fifteen bodies are dragged as quickly as possible to the chasm and tossed over the edge (save for one, which Chad Slambody retains for selfish and nefarious reasons). They fear that the bodies were being taken back to the "headquarters" for reanimation. The group rests for a while longer, recovering some of their strength, and when ready, they move ahead toward the distant rectangles of light. Chad scouts ahead and finds a three story building made of wood. There's a ramp on the right side leading up, with platforms and doors at three different levels. But there's also a guard on the roof waving a bright arc light back and forth in a random sweeping pattern, obviously trying to dissuade or spot anyone approaching. The investigators realize that YES, they have made some commotion with gun shots and explosions, but the lightning gun discharges could just as easily have been from cultists fending off polyps. They discuss their options, and lacking a better, cohesive plan, Chad decides to shoot out the spotlight from the maximum distance. Two deafening retorts later, and the glass bulb shatters into a thousand pieces and the light winks out. At this juncture, the group debates whether they should destroy this building now and sift through the remains, or try and infiltrate it. The ringleader of this cultist operation, Dr. Robert Huston, is possibly inside, and he is no doubt a dangerous animal. Ronnie and Chad flank right while Lester and Hans move closer, but Hans soon spots a new train of cultists approach the building from the left, nearly twenty of them in a long, staggered line under the dangling light bulbs. They are still several hundred yards away, but the investigators are completely hidden within darkness. A few cultists finally reach the front of the building and enter the bottom door, while two remain as guards outside, fearfully glancing around with clubs in hand. Chad and Ronnie lope back to the others after a quick surveillance run, and soon after, the man inside comes out rolling a 50-gallon barrel down the ramp, and Chad decides to SHOOT first and ask questions later. His aim is true, and a split second after the guards spot his muzzle flare, the barrel explodes! Yes, 50 gallons of gasoline rip off a huge, fiery chunk of the building away, spitting flame and fumes and smoke high into the air, revealing in a hell-red glow more details about the alien architecture of the city. The cultists nearby are launched away with dying screams, but part of the building facade is on fire now and the resultant glow makes the investigators visible, albeit dimly. Furthermore, after the explosion, the screams of men and women are heard emanating from somewhere inside the wooden structure. The investigators start popping off more shots at the approaching cultists, missing more than hitting, and with riotous cries of rage and madness, the Abo's charge their location, bat-teeth clubs lifted above their heads! Chad, Lester and Hans rattle off a few shots but most fly wide, although a few cultists are wounded. Soon they have closed within melee range, so Hans and Lester unpack their lightning guns and level off a few devastating bursts. Electricity spits and sizzles, and amid the screams of the dead and dying, the investigators ruefully grin at each other. Their pleasure is short lived when they realize that the shock troops were just a diversion for the more lethal spellcasters in the back ranks: Hands lifted, terrible syllables rolling from their tongues in an unknown language, four Aboriginal cultists point at the investigators and unleash withering rays of black putrescence from their fingertips! The Shriveling spells inflict horrible damage, and are nearly impossible to dodge. Lester writhes in agony, his skin rotting where the evil touches him. Hans screams in pain is well, and naked Chad Slambody loses a nipple to the dark magic; it melts from his naked chest like hot taffy. But the vile spells do not kill the investigators, and their next round of lightning guns demolish the sorcerers. They regroup, and almost immediately break up into separate squads to cover as much ground as possible. Chad leaps over the flames engulfing the ramp and sprints to the second floor. Ronnie Talltree follows, while Lester scouts out the line of bulbs to make sure no one else is approaching, and Hans smashes out a first floor window and crawls into the room. It is a storage room obviously, filled with heavy crates, arc lights, tins of food and water, welding equipment, drills, mining hats and rope and shovels and wheelbarrows and steel track...and THREE 50-gallon drums of gasoline!!! The fire is spreading quickly, crackling along the walls and eaves, filling their lungs with acrid smoke and inching ever closer to the combustibles. Hans tears through the room, throwing anything of potential value out the window and into wheelbarrows. Chad peeks furtively into the second floor door, and sees several dozen Aboriginal captives locked in cages. The stench of refuse and bodily waste is nauseating, but he enters anyway, using Ronnie as a translator. The natives are terrified, pressing to the backs of the cages, but Chad almost immediately spots a pregnant woman nearly at the brink of birth. She's in late labor, huffing and puffing on the iron grid, and Chad doesn't like the sound of that. Bad things tend to come out of the wombs of captives; Hyapatia Masters in Kenya being a prime example. He nearly shoots her dead right there, but Ronnie talks him out of it. They try to open the cage doors, even wedging a crowbar in, but the doors are strangely sealed; there's not even a proper lock. In a moment of inspiration, Chad wonders if they are magnetically closed... Hans warns everyone that there are barrels about to explode on the ground floor, so if they're going to rescue the prisoners and search the 3rd floor, they better get it done. The group clambers to the top landing, and very, very carefully, Chad peeks in, shotgun readied to blast the head off anything that moves, especially a madman of Nyarlathotep named Dr. Robert Huston. Inside is a living area replete with a cluttered desk, a leather swivel chair, a mound of gear and equipment, bookshelves piled high with antiquated scrolls, a kitchenette, a rumpled sleeping cot, and a shortwave radio in the corner. There's no sign of a living soul. They begin rummaging through the room as fast as they can. Hans spots a strange metal helmet on the table with electrodes sticking out, as well as a copper bowl with Mythos runes. Both are confiscated. Lester finds in the desk a heavy handwritten manuscript entitled "GODS OF REALITY" that weighs in at a hefty 600 pages. He takes it, and Chad finds hanging on the wall above the shortwave radio a strange electronic device on a leather thong. Intrigued, he rushes down the ramp with the device and sprints into the cage room. Sure enough, the mechanism sends a mild electric charge through the magnetic locks and unseals them. Unfortunately, at about the same time, he hears a horrifying baby squeal, and sees a putrid trail of greenish blood and slime leading from the loins of the mother. Something unwholesome indeed has sprouted from her, groping toward the bars with a wobbly head full of needle teeth, barely able to move on emaciated stubby legs. Chad dispatches it with a well-placed shotgun blast and splatters demon-baby all over the prisoners in the cage. [img]http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/alive.jpg[/img] Free now, but unable to escape down the ramp due to burning timber and smoke, they notice for the first time a knotted rope on the back of the building. One by one everyone begins slithering down until they reach the back of the complex, which is shrouded in darkness. But Chad can't stand to leave the gasoline barrels! Against his better judgment, he orders everyone to get the hell away from the house, and he primes a single stick of dynamite against the outer wall. If placed just right, it will destroy the wall and allow him to roll a drum of gasoline out before it explodes. And as luck would have it, the wall ruptures just as needed and the barrels are still intact, although dangerously close to the flames. Chad and Ronnie manage to get one out and they collapse to the dusty stone outside only seconds before the entire headquarters erupts into a plume of flame like a Roman candle, raining burning debris down on their heads. [img]http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/blow.jpg[/img] Surrounded by soot and hot ash, trembling prisoners, the crackle of flames and splintering wood, the investigators huddle in the dust and the dark, their faces bathed in red, wondering what to do next. And there we stopped. P.S. [SIZE=3]"GODS OF REALITY"[/SIZE] [I]Monday, April 21st, 1923 Madness is the mark of the gods, the response to the whisper of ancient secrets, and the unseen hand that turns the world in its disordered course. With it, I have peered beyond mere dream and pattern, beyond childhood impetuosity and adult grief, beyond the analysis of which other men are capable. Accepting madness, I accept the gods and rule well with their gifts thereby…[/I] [/QUOTE]
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