Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 977823" data-attributes="member: 41">Reaping 23, CY 59356: The Headsman’s Whore.Heydricus, Dabus and Prisantha appear mere feet away from the trio of villains Prisantha scryed earlier.  All three of Liberators are cloaked by an improved invisible spell.  Heydricus holds his portable hole so that the opening dangles vertically from his left hand.  As they materialize, Dabus contemplates Tritherion’s righteous might, and grows to nearly twice his normal size.The deck of the Headsman’s Whore does not rock and undulate gently with the sea, as would a normal ship.  Rather, it seems to have a mind of its own, leaping and springing against the weight of the Liberators’ feet as soon as they arrive.  They can feel the thing palpably hating them, and the disquiet preys on their minds for the duration of their stay.They appear toward the prow of the vessel, no more than sixty feet from the colossal corpse impaled upon the ship’s ram.  The giant’s upper torso towers twenty feet above the point where the spike pierces it through the chest.  Its arms are pulled backwards and strapped to the prow with thick bands of razor-wire, as if it is to be drawn and quartered.  The thing bounces along limply, occasionally bobbing its massive head against the motion of the vessel, or wheezing air through the hole in its chest.Directly in front of the invisible Liberators are the three figures noted in Prisantha’s scrying; Lucius Maturin, Sunifarel Brightmantle, and Lord Ombi, called “the little devil” by his friends for the depth of his depravity.  At the sound of the expanding air that distinguishes a teleport spell, Sunifarel and Ombi both turn around. The elf allows a momentary panic to cross his features before he backs up to the railing.  Ombi, on the other hand, cocks his head and squints.  Maybe there’s something wrong with his eyes, he thought he heard somebody comin’ to kill him?  Ombi laughs and brandishes his dwarven war axe, saying, “Who wants a piece of Ombi?  Who wants to wet my mommy-chopper?”Lucius does not turn around at all.  Rather, his hands remain on the rail while his head rotates on his shoulders until it is facing the opposite direction from its natural orientation.  He still has a head of the thick, black, curly hair that marked him in life; and while his complexion has drained of color, his hair looks strangely alive against his dead skin.  Lucius maintains a flat expression, but regards Heydricus with a look that the sorcerer fancies contains some glimmer of companionship, and perhaps even a silent plea within it.  Lucius begins to walk backwards toward the Liberators, his body rotating slightly with each step, his head maintaining its facing all the while.  After four paces both his torso and his head are facing Heydricus.  “There are only three of them,” he drawls.  “Directly where I gaze.”-----The Headsman’s Whore rumbles along on hundreds of wheels and rolling bars emerging from the lower decks.  Free from the restraints of either aerodynamics or good taste, the deck is a riot of garish color and lewd relief work.  Horrific murals and sculptures in various stones and metals depict the most depraved acts imaginable, involving nearly every human taboo in any variety of combinations.To the aft end of the juggernaut’s deck, a delicately curved retaining wall forms the base of the aftcastle.  Its graceful span is pierced at deck level by four large, oblong holes, spaced equidistantly along its length.  This wall is divided in its center by a set of broad steps that give out onto the first level of the aftcastle, some 20 feet above deck.  At deck level, directly in front of the stairs, a trio of iron grates cover three large holes, each one some six feet in diameter.  Just beyond the stairs, at the first level above deck, an iron-bound double door is the only opening into the covered barbican of the aftcastle, another 20 feet in height.Perched on the top of this building is the biggest three-headed insectile advanced manticore the party has ever seen.At least seventy feet from tip to tail, the foul beast possesses a fly’s multifaceted eyes, along with the general build and markings of a praying mantis.  But where a praying mantis might be expected to have only one head, this thing has three.  All three heads are disturbingly human-like, despite the insect features and rows of glistening metal teeth protruding from the four-foot wide mouths.  As the creature turns its gazes toward the party, its bony scorpion tail flexes, brandishing a morning-star head of bony spikes at its tip.  It begins to buzz its fly-wings, and the impossibly loud droning washes over the Liberators with a wave of sound, apathy, and hopelessness.“Um, that’s bad,” says Heydricus.At that moment, all three of the iron grates set into the deck seem to explode, as fifty-foot tall jets of flame burst from them, reaching toward the sky.  As the air shimmers and dances from the heat, thin licks of flame separate themselves from the main mass to form arms, and something resembling a head.  All three gargantuan fire-spirits begin to roll and roil toward the characters.“Wow, that’s worse,” says Heydricus.Just as he says so, several pieces of the stone and metal statuary flex and pull themselves away from their embeddings, stomping laboriously across the deck.  The two iron statues appear to be identical—stark, expressionistic renderings of a massively emaciated old man.  The four stone statues represent the worst of the victims of the unnatural decadence showcased by the juggernaut’s decoration.“Okay, this is bullsh-t.” Heydricus says.  He draws his sword, keeping the portable hole open with his other hand.“I wish I was safe in my room,” Sunifarel says, as he disappears.  Heydricus sighs.Elijah is the first Liberator out of the bag, and she leaps from the portable hole and into a cat-like crouch directly in front of Lucius.  The cadaverous assassin gazes into her eyes and cruelly compresses her courageous heart and iron will into a tiny, mewling, infantile ball.  Elijah gasps in sheer terror, and scrambles away from the undead monstrosity.As Elijah’s desperate stumbling becomes a run, Lucius flings a handful of glitter-powder into the air as a momentary distraction, and is gone.  Ombi stands alone before the Liberators, but if the prospect frightens him, he shows no sign.  “Come on, you,” he says.  “Have a lick . . .”Dabus summons a celestial dire lion directly on top of the dwarf.  Ombi grunts once as he goes down under the lion’s weight, then grunts again as the lion tears a halfling-sized chunk out of the dwarf.  The presence of the celestial lion seems to repulse the Headman’s Whore, and the deck surface ripples out away from the lion, as if to escape.  Ombi manages to wiggle his head and shoulders free from the lion just as Heydricus pounces on him.  One, two, three swings, and the dwarf is in four parts.Gwendolyn emerges from the portable hole, followed by Regda and Jespo Crim.  Gwen flies above the deck and tries to focus on the confusing mass of golems, elementals and . . . things below.Prisantha concentrates on Sunifarel, and demands that he “return and surrender at once.”  Not being the sort of elf to recognize a gift horse while examining its teeth, Sunifarel clings greedily to his remaining thirty-six seconds of life, and refuses to emerge from his room.  “He resisted me!” Pris exclaims.  “That’s unusual.”“Fine,” Heydricus says as he chops at a twitching dwarven hand.  “We’ll do it the hard way.”  He looks across the deck at the mass of monstrous foes assembled against him.  “We’ll do them all the hard way.”The colossal zombie at the prow twitches, shudders, and then begins thrashing against its binds.  In a moment it has torn its arms free, and begins to swing at Liberators, the thick strands of razor-wire whipping through the air.  Gwendolyn is taken unawares, and slashed across the backs of both legs.  Thankfully, her stoneskin prevents the wire from severing her legs outright.  Jespo notes the presence of the giant with a startled yelp, and reflexively summons a hound archon onto the forecastle.  The archon itself spans no more than the distance between the giant’s sternum and chin, but surrounds itself with a celestial’s fury, and lays into the thing.The massive three-headed insecticore springs toward the party’s position, its droning wings barely able to provide it any momentum against the forward-motion of the juggernaut.  Nonetheless, it clumsily navigates the distance between them, and lands belly-first onto the deck, crushing the Liberators beneath its bulk!  Heydricus is too near the rail to be affected, Elijah running away too quickly, and Gwendolyn flying too high in the air, but the rest of the party is trapped beneath fifty feet of crushing, chitinous, dogpile.Elijah’s mad panic sends her directly beneath one of the fire spirits, and thin tendrils of flame lick her skin as she runs past.  She catches on fire, but does not seem to care, the imperative to flee Lucius paramount in whatever part of her mind still reasons.</blockquote>

Verification