NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4060439" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #15:  The Ritual of NitcrosisLucifer Lardlover bends over their defeated foe and inserts a black opal into the chest cavity.  Blood stains his fingers, but he pushes further into the croc-man’s heart.  Arcane words roll off his tongue while he holds the Staff of Nyambe, and employing vile mysticism, the magician demands the soul to return!Whether the actual soul comes back or some other animus spirit, the shattered corpse stirs, and then stands to its feet as Lardlover’s shambling servant. “Good Lord, that is disgusting,” mutters Chang.  The crocman’s intestines hang out, trailing black blood to its scaly feet. Morty holds a hand to his mouth. He will not be taking pictures of this atrocity, and actually refused to bring his photography equipment at all. No one should be exposed to this madness anymore!  No one! “Fear not,” says Lucifer, patting his reptilian servant on the shoulder.  “The creature is mine to command now. It is harmless unless instructed to harm.  Let us move on.  I sense prowlers in the darkness. Gentlemen…stay sharp!” They continue deeper into the maze, with only flashlights to give them an inkling of where they are and the horrors looming out of sight. The undead croc-man leads the way as a meat shield, plodding with slow, labored steps.  They actually have to slow down to keep pace with the thing. They soon reach an alcove filled with golden incense burners, and what is possibly a hieroglyphic poem to the Black Pharaoh. If Nevelle were here he would have fully deciphered the words, but no one else cares, and they fear that understanding the poem may be more harmful than helpful.  <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/burner.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />They order the crocman to take the golden treasures, but it only understands a few words of Arabic. They stuff an extra flashlight into the shredded hole in its chest and send it ahead as a point guard.They pass several other corridors writhing with black roses and skirt around them, eventually winding back to the main tunnel. They keep using the "left only" rule and turn into a side passage, but Chad Slambody is shocked when he sees a severed head thrust upon a pole.  He jumps back, gnawing a knuckle, and tells the others they might not want to look. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/Wretch.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />[GM Note: this sequence was written when Gigi was still an active character.  I desperately wanted to see that old woman meet her doom in a wheelchair. What GM wouldn’t?  Anyway, tying back to GiGi’s character background, the head on the pole was her husband’s head, but Chad didn’t suffer nearly the Sanity blast that she would have.  Oh well].They advance further, peeking into every dark nook and cranny, and finally find several empty cell rooms capable of holding prisoners.  Perhaps even hundreds. The area reeks of human refuse and suffering.  Morty spots a small white object in the corner, so he bends down to pick it up.A cigarette butt.  He sniffs it, thinking immediately of Dr. Clive.  They trudge onward, working deeper into the maze until they are lost, save for chalk marks they scrawl at junctions (and the handy overhead map on the game table). The chalk actually gives them an idea of where they are because they pass the same marks several times. They eventually reach a winding staircase that leads to the main tunnel and a T-junction.  Chad Slambody pauses partway down when he sees growing torchlight. To their horror, a massive Elephant-headed man walks by, followed by a second, and then three jackal-headed men, followed by two serpent-men hybrids!<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/beasts2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />As Lucifer Lardlover suspected, anthropomorphic beings are alive and well in this place. The monsters look formidable, so the party heads another direction rather than confront them.They soon reach a ten-foot gap in the floor that is too risky to jump.  They backtrack and take an alternate route, clambering up a steep, wet slope.  But as Chang slides down the opposite side he sees a humanoid shape lurking around the corner. He grinds to halt, trying to scuttle back up, but a jackal-man whirls around the corner and aims a bow at him!“Agh!” cries Chang.  “Somebody kill that th—”  The beast chuckles, bowstring creaking, but Chad Slambody removes the top of its head with a well-placed shotgun blast.  The sound echoes through the tunnels, ricocheting into infinite darkness.  They don’t know who or what could hear the noise, or if reinforcements will come to investigate. They reach a new portion of the main tunnel where Morty hears marching footsteps again, most likely the elephant man troupe continuing their rounds. They decide to follow this time and eventually catch up, although the slow, lumbering crocman-zombie lags far behind. The investigators are nearly surprised when the anthropomorphic monsters reverse direction and head back at them! The party retreats down a side tunnel, waiting until the group has passed, and decide that NOW is the time to attack, sandwiching the enemy between themselves and the crocman zombie who can’t keep up. With clear line of sight down a stretch of tunnel, the four heroes arrange themselves in ranks and unleash a barrage of scattershot, bullets and magic from Lucifer Lardlover. [He’s rather fond of Fist of Yog-Sothoth, and the Staff of Nyambe absorbs the ability score damage]Fortune is with them, for the large Elephant Man would have killed someone with one strike.  Chad Slambody scores a critical hit and the monster perishes from a severed spinal column.  The huge elephant man collapses forward and crushes two of its allies.  The second elephant man charges, swinging a polearm, and the jackalmen frenzy against the croc-zombie. Bullets fly, some hit, some don't, the walls echoing with gunshots and screams until the air is clouded with smoke, but two rounds later the enemies are all dead save for one subdued jackalman that whines miserably to itself.  They break its neck. Sagging against the walls in relief, the investigators are unharmed. Lucifer Lardlover knows he can animate the dead elephant man as an ally, but only if he cuts the crocman loose from servitude. Furthermore, with his keen occult wisdom, Lardlover knows that if the elephant man has 9 or more mystical elements of its infinite soul called mysterious "Hit Dice" then it will rip free from his dark charm and attack them!  But it slides in with just 8 hit dice, and their new servant is fearsome indeed.  They send the pachyderm clomping down the passage as a beefy shield.[GM Note: I would like to remind everyone that we are running “Indiana Jones & The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep” with a D&D crowd.  From the beginning, I wanted to run a pulp-action scenario, so yes, much of what happens is contrary to the typical Cthulhu scenario (although these reanimation spells are in the corebook).  We had a great time, and that’s what matters in the end]. For another half an hour they wander through the maze but don’t encounter any other foes, until the see tall pillars flanking another room.  This place looks important, and yet another jackal-headed guard waits here. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/anubis.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The elephant man is given specific orders:  KILL!, so it approaches the oblivious guard.  The jackalman realizes too late that something is wrong with his huge, gray ally, but by then the elephant man has popped its head like a big wet grape.  Blood and brains splatter the floor and walls, and the investigators gingerly step around the gore and climb the steps.  They cautiously enter enters a new area, but this place fills them with growing dread...It is a massive chamber 500 x 400 feet, the ceiling supported by columns whose stony branches sway in the ethereal wind of otherworldly dimensions. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of robed cultists fill the room, which is lit only by torches, and they are engaged in the midst of hideous rituals.Blood, sex, and murder.Now the party knows where the prisoners are.  The ritual follows a pattern established by the one Chang and Morty witnessed at Gavigan’s estate, but on a much larger scale.  Their Sanity suffers from witnessing the atrocities here, but they have all swallowed Ali Kafour’s Elixirs of Fortitude and are able to keep their composure. [GM Note: I was thinking of Shen’s potions from Big Trouble in Little China]Using the shadows to their advantage, the party moves closer and finds a dark alcove.  Extra robes hang from hooks, so the party dons these conveniently placed garments, and casually stride into the chamber, trying to blend into the madmen, sadists and killers.Screams of anguish wash over them, and Morty averts his eyes, unwilling to watch the madness.  There are even animal-headed beasts ravaging human females, grunting with pleasure as they spread their wild seed. A short distance into the ceremony chamber they find a stairway leading down to red light. From this red light emanate human screams. Prisoners! Hating to see so much senseless death and torture, Chad Slambody and his boss Lucifer Lardlover investigate the stairwell, while Morty and Chang hang back.  They creep down until the red light permeates everything, and a hazy doorway looms before them.  Lucifer begins to suspect that the light and mist share an unnatural origin, but they push on regardless. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/evilarch.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />But prisoners do not wait through the light as they first expected, but rather a shifting haze of fiery mist that burns their lungs, and begins to suck them toward it!  Coughing in pain, Chad staggers back, and grabs Lucifer’s robes. Discordant voices whisper to them, begging them to join their eternal suffering, but Chad doesn’t want any part of that.  Before he is sucked into the nothingness, they both stumble backward through the arch.  Behind them, ghostly entities flit back and forth, and they realize with a certain amount of (Sanity draining) dread that they just walked through a Doorway to Hell.Morty is losing it.  He presses himself against Chang, trying to keep his eyes averted.  A naked Egyptian man holding a wet skull and spinal column bumps into him, babbling gibberish and frothing at the mouth.  Morty pushes him away, deciding he must kill as many of these bastards as possible! Cultists surround them on all sides, a literal tide of bodies, and they find themselves pushed to the very edge of a large rectangular pit. To their disgust, the pit is filled with black water and uncountable writhing black leeches.  Screaming sacrifices are tossed in a dozen at time to be devoured at the slimy leisure of the vat's vile inhabitants. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/leech vic2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Chang can barely stand to look either, but morbid fascination takes over, and who should he see bob to the surface but their old friend FARAZ NAJIR!  The fat antiquities dealer is bloated more than ever, and surely not enjoying his reward for speaking to the PC’s.  He is one person they don’t mind seeing dead, and his corpse sinks back into the soupy black broth. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/deadfaraz.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The heroes blend into the chaos for now, just four in a throng of hundreds of depraved maniacs, but the bustling crowd separates them. Chad and Lucifer stick together, Chang and Morty in their own group. There are several more features looming in this large chamber, but they need to get closer. Lardlover sees a sacrificial ziggurat twenty feet high, topped by a golden sarcophagus and people climbing the stairs, some of whom resemble the Clive Party! Chad and Lucifer were told what they look like, and suspect that these individuals might be the same people: Clive, Agatha, Johan, Martin Winfield and Johan Sprech.  Even from this distance, Morty spots Johan’s shock of blond hair. However, there is a sixth cloaked person they do not recognize, and wonder if it is the vile sorcerer Omar Shakti.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/ritual.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />But there is more.They see a sweating emerald stone throne with two chairs, and a high catwalk leading out of the chamber. Nearby sits another narrow stele and a secondary entrance to the room.  And at the very back of this immense chamber looms a gaping rift in the far wall as if it has imploded, and the darkness within is eerily complete, like the center of a cosmic black hole...They don’t know what to do yet, other than watch the festivities commence.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/hole.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

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