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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5188983" data-attributes="member: 54707">D&D/Fantasy Adventure – Trigger Force: The Byzantine government, having recently concluded a peace treaty with the Bulgars establishing new forntier’s borders leave a series of lightly armed garrisons throughout northern Macedonia. In the town of Sardica the Byzantines leave a 30-man garrison from the Macedonian Theme army under the command of a Byzantine General. The garrison, along with a string of other garrisons in the area is to act as a “Trigger Force.” If the Bulgars or any other invaders attack the garrison then the full wrath of the Byzantine Army will be triggered and will fall upon the invaders. The garrisons function as designed and the Trigger Forces are left unmolested for over two years. Apparently for fear of provoking the Romans to new war. Thereafter however contact between the frontier and Constantinople becomes more and more sporadic. After finally losing all contact reports with several of the garrisons the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254759-worlds-apart.html#post4764298" target="_blank">Basilegate</a> is sent to investigate the situation. They discover several abandoned garrisons at small frontier towns, and two towns that are completely deserted. Each abandoned area seems as if it was deserted hurriedly. There is some evidence of limited violence, but none of apparent large-scale raids or attacks by slave takers, or brigands.As they move farther north and west they hear rumors surrounding the frontier town of Sardica. Upon arrival they find the population terrified and in virtual hiding. The party is pointed to a stone and wooden fortification where the garrison was housed, but none of the local folk will approach it. The locals do report that for three nights terrible shrieks and screams were heard at the garrison, but none of the forces there appeared or were sighted during the commotion.The next morning the Basilegate travels up the hill outside the town to the fortification. There they discover a bizarre and horrifying sight. In several places the stonewalls of the garrison are still standing but blasted black and charred as if by great heat. When these areas of the wall are touched, they crumble to ash, as if the walls had been made of paper rather than mountain granite. Inside the fortification are even stranger sites. There are driven into the ground at multiple points sharpened wooden stakes. The stakes are covered in gore and blackened blood. As if each had been used to impale someone. Yet each stake is sharpened only at the end driven into the ground and each stake, though over ten feet tall is warped, gnarled, and twisted, as if by some huge hand. In the barracks where the garrison was housed the walls are covered in blood and gore, as if men had been slaughtered like animals. Large iron pots and kettles are found atop long dead fire pits and in each vessel is the head of a goat or sheep (or several heads), soaked in a fly and maggot infested sludge of old blood and rank liquid. And in the center of the compound can be found a huge, partially burned pit of the corpse-remains of all of the butchered animals. Yet also among the remains can be plainly seen the massive and bloated bodies of what appear to be two bears and a mountain lion. Also near the bottom of a pit is the body of some creature that no-one in the party has ever seen, or even heard of. It appears to have had four heads, one vulture like, one vaguely cat like, one something like a reptile, the last like some huge misshapen frog or toad. The body appears to have been enormous, partially cover in something like a cross between oily feathers and fish-fins, and the limbs seem to have protruded at nearly impossible angles from the body. The stench rising for the mound of carcasses is so powerful and noxious that several members of the party either vomit violently or pass out if in the immediate vicinity for too long.After reconnoitering this area the party sees movement near a section of the outer wall to the rear of the compound. Investigating cautiously they apparently see several members of the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254759-worlds-apart-2.html#post4768219" target="_blank">Caerkara</a> (whom they have encountered before) milling about a hole in the ground near the bottom section of the wall. But as the Basilegate approaches the wall the members of the Caerkara appear to dissolve and disappear. The whole scene seems eerie, weird, disturbing, and malevolent. There is no sound of any kind, even background noise.At the wall and near the hole the party finds what appears to be a severed human hand, but it is far too large to be a human hand. It is over two feet in width, and the palm is covered in dull metal bands, with sharp studs that pierce the flesh of the hand wherever the metal touches. However also within the open hand is a painted plate housing a complex gear work of unknown design, a glowing bar of some type of crystal, and the purple standard of the Byzantine Emperor. The hole at the wall seems as if it were dug or clawed from beneath the ground, rather than from the surface downwards. Where the hole touches the base of the wall thousands of unnatural looking worms and centipedes crawl and squirm. From the hole seeps a sickeningly sweet odor, and emanates the sound of ocean waves striking a rugged shoreline, even though Sardica is hundreds of miles from any sea. Hearing a sudden commotion the party races back to the center of the compound where they find the rotted corpses of the strange, alien creature, and the bears and the mountain lion rising from the pile of animal carnage, and each creature-corpse hisses like a boiling pot of hot oil. Drawing weapons and preparing to either fight or run the party suddenly also realizes that the blood and gore along the walls and elsewhere in the compound has begun to congregate and congeal into the body of a monstrous and viscous figure, perhaps twenty feet tall, with but a single hand.</blockquote>

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