Session 1 07/29/11
As recalled by Dageus the Britain Druid
Sicily was a disaster. The Carthoginean General who led us underestimated the opposition and he paid for his poor judgment with his life. After that it was a rout. Some units held together and made it back to the port where they were able to commandeer ships to make their escape. But even then we weren't safe. A storm came up and the ships were tossed. Maybe some of the ships made it through, but many did not.
When we came to, we were on a beach with bodies everywhere. The only sign of life was two mules wandering on their own. A man, later identified as one of the General's slaves, comes running from the beach. He screams something about "not again" and dives into the water and begins to swim away. There is a halfhearted attempted to call him back to the shore, but no one one went into the water to try to drag him back, and soon he was lost from site.
The survivors numbered nine, counting one slave and the two mules. The searched among the bodies and the beach looking for anything that they could salvage. At best they had only a toga or tunic, although at least one survivor didn't even have that.
Dageus found a spear in the water on the beach. He gave it to Berlix, he seemed most capable and was first to identify himself as a warrior.
Everyone packed up spare tunics. Twenty were place on one of the mules. Dageus took three for himself. Two that he planned to use to build a shelter and one to drape over his head to protect him from the sun. Others found a small pouch, a dagger and 25 feet of rope. Dageus offered to carry the rope while the rest of the items were passed out.
There was no sign of plants or animals on the beach. Even the ocean was devoid of any plants, although Belrix did manage to catch a fish with his spear.
Dageus walked the edge of the beach and found an old riverbed. There were tracks of men and horses going up it. After some discussion, we decided to follow the tracks. We waited out the worst of the days heat and started following the riverbed in the evening. Hiking into the night. We eventually stopped for the remainder of the night.
The next day we had all begun to feel the threat of dehydration.
It was early in the day when we found a suit of armor along the riverbed and not far off to the right were two clay tablets. Akbar claimed the tablets as belonging to him. Unfortunately, almost immediately following this find we suffered our first casualty. One of the mules went down.
While the mule was butchered as well as it could be under the circumstances, Dageus lead the second mule away. There was no reason to disturb the beast by letting it witness what might well be its fate. The blood from the poor creature was the first thing we had to drink since coming to this desert.
Later that day we came upon bodies several hundred yards from the riverbed.. Three men and two horses lay dead in the sand. From the wounds it was clear they had not died peacefully. Quintus claimed the gladius that still protruded from one of the bodies. Also found there was a belt and knife, 2 empty water skins, 4 more of the tablets, a spear and two suits of leather armor. One was soft leather, the other hard leather.
We moved on from the corpses, back to the riverbed. By this time we had come to realize that we had been following other survivors from the shipwreck, but we saw no option but to continue on our path. There were still tracks to follow and for now, our best choice seemed to lay in the same direction. As the day drew on we continued to find discarded items. A battle axe, a short sword, two more suits of hard leather armor. We collected each item as we found it.
Belrix took the axe and returned the spear to Dageus. Quintus took the rope and tied it to the rusted armor he was carrying so that he could drag it behind him if he needed too.
The second mule gave out toward the end of the day. Again we took what nourishment we could from drinking the beast's blood.
When we camped that night there was a long, deafening roar with a series of short lived screams intermixed. Seeing little reason to avoid a confrontation, we gathered our weapons and went in the direction of the commotion.
Moving along the edge of the riverbed, we spotted the torrential flood of water just as it rushed by us. Three of our group were close enough to the edge that the rush of water pulled them in. While only a few feet deep, the current was such that Akbar was ripped from his feet and lost from site as the current bore him away. Quintus and Marcus (?) also fell into the water but managed to keep their footing. Quintus had to cut the rope holding his armor and after stumbling lost the gladius he carried.
It was Belrix who seemed to move to action first, actually going into the water to offer what help he could to get the others out. Dageus offered what help he could by anchoring a spear in the sand and lashing a tunic around it, keeping it tight for Belrix in case he too should fall.
Fortunately, the flood did not last long and we were able to regroup without any loses. Even Akbar, who it had appeared was lost for good was found, a little waterlogged, but alive and no worse for the ordeal. Apparently we are hard men to drown, as this was the second time we found our lives threatened by water in as many days.
Well, at least we all got a chance to get a drink and fill the waterskins we had salvaged. It wasn't much, but it would give us another day to find our way through the desert.
We rested a short while before continuing along the riverbed. It did not take long for the bed to once again start to dry and what was a raging river only a few short hours ago had quickly become a trickle of mud and even that would soon be baked away under the heat of the day.
We never did find the source of the screams during the night. Our assumption was that other were camped in the riverbed and had not been as lucky as us.
The day was hot and dry. We saw nothing for most of the trek. That is until we came to a pile of stones in the distance. As we drew closer it was clear it was the foundation of some building and that we had found the remains of an ancient stone city that has long since been dead, and from all clues abandoned.
Quintus and Belrix led the way into the city. The rest of us trailing a bit behind. In the heart of the city rose a great pyramid. Felix climbed to the top, investigating the three statues that lay there. One statue was a bearded man with set of scales in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other. The second statue was a winged child, and the last statue was of a woman wielding wheat in one hand and a sword in the other. The statues did not get as much attention as the body wedged into doorway leading into the pyramid.
As we all regrouped, we decided that our best course of action was to explore the pyramid. Some lore suggested that items which would help the dead exist in the afterlife would be buried within. Perhaps we would find something that would aid the living in this life as well, for we had found nothing in the ruins that looked promising.
We planned to rest the night before beginning the search. In the morning when the other priests were preparing themselves, Dageus took the opportunity to explore a little on my own. He discovered a campsite that was perhaps a day or two old, possibly belong to the corpse we found at the pyramid. After searching the camp, he discovered a single flask of oil.
We needed light for the pyramid, so torches were made and soaked in the oil.
When we stood at the entrance to the pyramid, Quintus pulled the body to clear the doorway. The body tumbled over the side just as the door slammed shut. It took some work, but eventually the door was pushed open with brute strength. The trap that claimed the life of the earlier explore must have reset for a huge arrow shot through the doorway, grazing Quintus as it passed.
After tending to the wounded, Dageus offered to carry the torch as the group entered the tomb. A wall filled with a half dozen holes was opposite the entrance at a bend in the corridor. We kept to the left side of the passage and managed to avoid having any other traps go off. In front of the wall with the holes we discovered another body.
After the bend we came to a door. Pushing it in activated an old trap. Bronze tipped darts tumbled to the floor from a hole in the ceiling. We entered a room that contained three columns. Each with a door leading into it. All save one went into the room. Quintus (?) stayed at the doorway.
Opening the right most pillar revealed nothing. The center one contained a ladder going up and down. The last pillar was trapped. Several bronze tipped darts shot out of the wall and struck Felix as the outside door to the room swung shut, trapping Quintus outside. A hissing filled the room, and each of us began to fill ill.
Trapped in the room, we went to the central pillar and begin the descent into it. At the bottom was a large beetle with glowing red spots on its back. Dageus was the last one down, still holding the torch to light the way for the others. Quintus managed to get the outside door open and enter the room as Dageus was going down so that he could follow what remained of the light.
