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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4193354" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #24: The Spawn of Nyarlathotep (Part 3)PART 3:  Birth (and Death) of a GodThe ceiling is over 100 feet high. Six pillars support the roof, but they are not regular pillars, but rather horrid stone tentacles replete with wet suckers. [GM Note: I had the room built out on a battlemap, but didn’t take pictures.  It was pretty big. I think one mini represented 100 people, or something like that].Thousands of cultists cram shoulder to shoulder into a room that is wider than a football field. To the south, a huge, ragged hole has collapsed the wall, and from here, wide stone steps descend to the valley floor. While the investigators crept through the inner secret corridors, the cultists took the route and up and past their vengeful god. In the center of this chamber (which is seemingly expanded from natural lava tubes) sits a 3' x 7' green stone altar. However, everyone’s attention is focused on the east side of the chamber, a good 500' from the investigators, where a dais rests against the wall, and something HUGE is squatting upon it that looks like a big quivering, ochre balloon. With the dim light, thousands of swooning cultists, and some pillars in the way, it's really hard to see. The entire group is scared, but they've come too far, through too many hardships and trials to fail now. Okumo, Chang and Lester stay behind, watching from the shadows of the secret alcove, while Chad and Father Salvatore gear up with dynamite and gas, and quietly blend into the crowd, prepared to sacrifice their very lives for the Greater Good. No one really notices them; they look like every other dirty, disheveled, blood-encrusted maniac. The sound they heard in the tunnel is even more magnified in the Great Chamber: a woman is in the pangs of child birth, and as Chad and Salvatore push through the crowd, drawing ever closer to the fleshy mound on the dais, they see what exactly has happened to Hyapatia Masters after all these years:<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/hya close.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />She is enormous, just a quivering flesh-bag for the entity inside her. Her skin is pulled taut, while her head wags off the end. Her lips are crusted with blood and she is crying and laughing and babbling incoherently. A tight line of bodies forms a semi-circle around her twenty feet out, giving her room for the spectacle to come. Chad and Father Salvatore have their work cut out for them, and Salvatore murmurs a quick prayer. 9 sticks of dynamite are already bundled together, and Salvatore quietly uncorks a gas can and weaves a trail of gas through the crowd.But Hyapatia Masters starts convulsing! (GM Note: The entire soundtrack from the past 2 adventures was from horror movie Slither, and the soundtrack for Hyapatia Bursting was called "Brenda Bursting")  Something massive squirms inside her body, and then two hideous orange eyes roll open within her translucent flesh! <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/hya3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Hyapatia screams one last time in agony, one last mad shriek after 5 years of incubating the son of the Devil inside her ravaged body, and her head pops open. Brains gush out, the skin-sack splits, embryonic fluids splash forth, and something ungodly wriggles into the world, flailing eyes and mouths and tentacles, a huge orange abomination the size of the entire dais. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/spawn.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />A chorus of praises fills the dark cathedral......just as Chad Slambody throws a bundle of dynamite, and immediately pushes back into the crowd of bodies.  But Father Salvatore is impulsive, thrashing to the very forefront, levels his shotgun and pumps a round into the dynamite as soon as it lands at the body of the thing. The bundle of dynamite explodes, washing the dais and all spectators with a bloom of flame.  Unearthly shrieks spill from the dais as the newborn Spawn of Nyarlathotep, only barely alive in the world of the living, is blasted into a thousand chunky bits of goo and blood and squirmy evil.  The shock blast knocks Salvatore off his feet as well as about one hundred other people, and inflicts incredible damage. Some are killed instantly; others are rendered unconscious, and Salvatore is only saved from death by pure luck, despite being struck in the head by shrapnel. Dazed, he falls to the ground, but many cultists spotted him, and their hands grapple the priest from every direction.From the hidden alcove, Chang, Okumo and Lester (and No-Name Mook) cringe as the thunderous explosion rocks the entire room.  Chunks of the ceiling crack and fall and the crowd stumbles backward from the flames. Screams wash back and forth as they shield their eyes from the glare.But the explosion also ignites the trail of gasoline, and second later, a secondary explosion sends more corpses flying into the air. Once again, dynamite has ruined a perfectly good ceremony of Nyarlathotep (GM Note: and for those surviving cultists from Giza who are also attending here, this is like deja-vu). Chad Slambody, naked and alone, hammers through the crowd. He shakes off several grappling arms and chucks his last stick of dynamite ahead of him, creating even more smoke, havoc and death, and hurtles himself around the conflagration. He is using the confusion to the best of his ability, and being as dirty and naked as everyone else, he meshes into the chaos.But Father Salvatore is not so lucky.  A dozen cultists pull his arms and legs and lift him over the heads while he chants the Lord's Prayer in defiance! He struggles to free himself, but no amount of Action Points can save him from a thousand combatants. He is hauled to three nearby pits previously unnoticed, and Father Salvatore is given a glimpse of three potential fates:A pit of black and green mambas.  A pit of ravenous rats.  Or a pit of carnivorous giant ants.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/snakepit.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/rat3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/ants.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />He is not really given a choice. M'Weru appears, her face twisted with anger, and points to the center pit. Father Salvatore is thrown down into the rat swarm, hundreds of black furry bodies crawling over him, infected teeth piercing his genitals, eating his nose off, gnawing his fingers and toes as he slowly screams his last...and hopefully gets a ride to Heaven, and not the maw of a certain nearby evil god.But, the others don't know about this. Chad finally reaches the blackened alcove and reunites with his allies, even as thousands of cultists thrash behind them, caught in the chaos the heroes have sown.  But their luck may have run out.The Spawn is dead.  The investigators are injured and near Insanity. Daddy has just lost his Son, and is pissed. And the party is still five days outside of Nairobi, with a jungle teeming with insects, snakes, disease and cultists in between them and freedom.Can they make it with no dynamite and dwindling ammo? Will they escape the Mountain of the Black Wind alive? Will Lester Cobblebottom fracture into a third disoriented personality? Will M'Weru capture and feed them to the rats and ants?  Will Chad finally make sweet man-love to Chang before thousands of cultists tear them limb from limb?Find out next time. [GM Note:  Although it took a long time to write this segment, it was no more than a 4 hour session].</blockquote>

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