Those That Are Left Behind |
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The first decision that needed to be taken was what to do with Dr Hauer. He didn't seem much of a threat, gibbering and weeping quietly, but given he had probably murdered the rest of his own expedition this was not an assumption to bet your life on. He was loaded on a horse and given into the care of the porter Carlos - who having been wounded by Hauer once was very unlikely to relax his vigilance. The pair headed off back down the trail towards Reflejo de Yuyay.
That done, the team carried on up towards the mountains, following the tracks of the two German expeditions.
After an hour, they crested the ridge and found themselves looking down into the next valley. Below, the shape of another ruined temple showed through the trees. Nearest to them the buildings were mere remnants of walls, but further on a large square structure with a domed roof was more intact, though great rents in the roof showed where some had collapsed.
 Keeper Note: As usual, Ric was an 8pm arrival, so Marcus is, er, a bit quiet at this point. When he arrived, 3 rounds into the fight, he rolled a 3-round insanity which retconned quite neatly. |
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The porters were instructed to remain at the ridge with the pack animals, though Húaman announced he would accompany his employers into the valley. As the usual scouts, Joe and Anné headed down into the valley, while Cyril, Charlie, Húaman and Marcus waited with the porters.
Joe used the Voorish Sign to explore the magical view of the place, he was instantly aware that black magic had been perpetrated here relatively recently, overlaying the air of blood sacrifice that the temple’s ancient history had left. A little later, Anné caught the distinctive whiff of death on the air.
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Picking along with enormous care, the pair discovered a human body around five hundred yards from the first structures. It had been a soldierly looking fellow in his mid-30s, dressed in the kind of tough clothes that travellers in this part of the world tended to favour; but had had a distinctly military haircut, and around his neck were two dogtags, one bearing the Black Sun insignia. An MP40 machine pistol lay near his hand, and he'd been shot several times from the side with a similar 9mm weapon. Local wildlife had been at the body, and he appeared to have been dead for a couple of weeks.
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Two hundred yards or so further on, two more corpses were discovered. These had Nachtwölfe tags, and one had a rifle of an unusual type - they'd seen something similar in the hands of Nachtwölfe stalkers, but much bigger. This was scaled for a normal human. Like the Stalker weapons, it had the peculiar blue crystals set into its structure, glowing very faintly. A search of the corpse yielded some clips of ammunition, which again had a distinctive blue glow to it. As they rifled these corpses, it occurred to Anné that neither had any food - no ration packs, no water bottles. This seemed very unusual for travellers in these parts, and they certainly wouldn't have survived the trip from Chiclayo without any.
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They moved even more carefully down the last part of the slope and to the edge of the temple's outer precincts. It was clear at a glance that there had been a sustained gun battle here; bullet pocks marred the remaining walls and the sooty smears of grenade blasts were visible. More bodies were apparent, but nothing was moving and after a while the pair waved their comrades forward to explore.
Five more bodies were scattered around, along with considerable expended brass and wreckage. One with Nachtwölfe tags had wounds as if odd-shaped shrapnel had torn through him pretty much everywhere; there was no sign of an explosion near him. One of the Black Sun casualties had been killed with - of all things - a sword - while another appeared to have been ripped up by some kind of savage animal. One of his arms and both legs were simply gone. Nobody paid much attention to his remains, and thus missed the anomalous state of the edges of the wounds...
Carefully, the team approached the main temple building, where a stepped portico led into a twenty-foot arched doorway. Peering in, they could see heaps of rubble in beams of light where the sun pierced the darkness through the holes in the roof. Suddenly, something large moved across one of these patches of light, and a sound of sliding stone revealed something moving inside. Everyone stepped back and fanned out, readying weapons as two huge, hideous forms shouldered out through the arch, tearing pieces of stone away as they came out into the sunshine. Húaman gave voice to a high, terrified scream, which rather summed up everyone else's reaction.
The creatures were composed of tissue, muscle, cartilage, and bone fused together in an abhorrent, writhing mass that pulled itself across the ground using appendages formed - apparently at random - from its overall seething bulk. Several heads protruded from the upper surface, forming and dissolving, with remarkably human features, twisted and distorted, displaying expressions of fear, pain, horror and blind hate. There was some similarity to the shoggoths in their mutable form; but those had been composed of a gelatinous substance, horrifying enough - these had been made from people!
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Dropping her weapon, Anné curled into a fœtal ball, hiding her head under her arms, simply unable to cope with what she was seeing. Joe raised his trusty Bren and shared a burst of thirty rounds of .303 between the two. For more than a century the .303 had given enemies of the Crown a good seeing-to; but not in this case. The rounds seemed to pass straight through the endlessly mutable flesh without having any effect at all. Behind them, Marcus started babbling incoherently, too rapidly for a normal human ear to translate.
As Húaman continued to scream hysterically, Cyril drew his Totenmesser in one hand, while unclipping a grenade with shaking fingers. Suddenly, vivid purple and green shapes engulfed his field of vision, and he found himself talking to a gigantic puce chicken with a rather nice red scarf and lace gloves.
Rubbery tentacles formed themselves from both of the abominations, lashing out towards the embattled humans, each with a razor-sharp bone blade on the end, slicing and piercing. Charlie, Húaman and Cyril were slashed, though Cyril, hallucinating wildly and barely aware of what was going on, seemed not to notice. Charlie, acting on an instinct, stepped up behind Cyril and dragged the newly-discovered StgW out of his backpack. Cyril perceived this as an uncomfortable pineapple being removed from his chair behind him and didn't object. He was concentrating on a rather friendly-looking orange seal, who seemed to want to play with the ball he was holding. He unwrapped the ball from its' tinfoil and tossed it to the seal, who caught it in its flippers and sang some Mozart to him in return.
The blast of the grenade sent shrapnel whipping through the party, leaving Charlie and Cyril with minor wounds, but also blasted pieces off the monster he had - by blind chance - thrown the grenade at. His next one was thrown miles too far, but by the greatest of good fortune did not strike the lintel of the arch; it disappeared into the temple to thump uselessly in the darkness. Joe added a bomb of his own, between the two monsters, doing some damage, though he couldn't help noticing that some of the larger detached pieces were starting to sprout little legs and heads, and move around on their own; which was not a good sign. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Húaman, face covered in tears of terror, fumble out his machete and ram it into his own throat. Joe turned and ran directly away from the fight.
Hefting the StgW, Charlie snapped the selector to Auto and pulled the trigger. The rifle blazed, hammering rounds of its short 7.92 cartridge at one of the things. A faint, glowing pale blue line, like tracer, followed each shot as they flew - and tore holes in the monster's substance. "Gradely," muttered the Yorkshireman, preparing to fire again.
Marcus finally got his chattering tongue under control. He'd been regretfully thinking of the banishment spell he'd not yet managed to learn, though sight of the Nachtwölfe blue glint in the things' eyes confirmed his conclusion that they were probably created on Earth rather than summoned. "Has anyone got anything flammable?" he yelled, to no useful response. He started to dig for his can of lighter fluid.
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Cyril's vision cleared a little, and he lashed out with his Totenmesser. The black blade sank into the creature, and he felt it connect to the dark life force imprisoned within. He drank deep, feeling his wounds close somewhat, but the rush of power was overwhelming. Screaming in rage he began to lash out in all directions.
Behind him, Joe had drawn his silver phurba in preference to the black steel blade Cyril had chosen. Hurdling Húaman's still form, and running back in, he stabbed with it, and grinned as his extensive experience as a knife-fighter paid off and dark blood flowed. He twisted the knife, and the whole thing collapsed.
Marcus hastily lashed one of the endless matches to his can of lighter fluid, took off and discarded the cap, struck the match awkwardly on the box, nearly dropped the whole lot on his foot and lobbed it over. For the first time, a Draugr made a noise - it screamed as the flames chewed at it, inflicting far more damage than he had expected. Marcus wished fervently that he'd had more cans with him. Meanwhile, Charlie had been skewered again as he dodged around Cyril's enraged stabs with his black knife. Cursing, he fired again, and the hideous thing dropped to the grass, twitching inhumanly.
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After an hour or so, everyone except Cyril was back to normal, so while the parapsychologist was waiting out his hallucinations, Anné cast a Healing on Charlie, shuddering as she felt the unclean connection to the dark being who provided it. Marcus did a rather splendid job of patching up Cyril's wounds, while Anné attempted to talk him out of his hallucinations. Unfortunately, all she managed to do was concentrate them on spiders, leaving him completely incapacitated for the rest of the day.
A huge fire was constructed, and the still-moving pieces of the creatures heaped on it with great care not to touch them directly. Sadly, they added Húaman's body, as his flesh was starting to warp and crawl in a disquieting way. Then they broke the news of his demise to the porters, who were very unimpressed.
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By evening, Cyril was recovered, and belatedly turned his skills to the single remaining Lightning Gun. After its' last failure against the Shoggoths in Miami, she'd not dared use it. Cyril cautiously dismantled it and concluded that it had simply overheated at the time; he judged it should now be safe to use. The indicator showed three charges left.
Returning to the temple the next morning, the team carefully entered the main hall, speaking quietly as Marcus was very nervous of the safety of the dome. Two more sets of clothing with Black Sun dogtags lay in the rubble; but no flesh remained. One had an ID card in the name of Olaf Panzermann, the photograph of which was horribly like one of the tortured faces they had seen on one of the Draugr.
Beyond the temple lay an avenue set between two gigantic oval walls, 70’ long and 50’ high. The inner surfaces of these were covered in bas-reliefs of Inca mythological scenes, surrounding which was writing, totally unknown on Inca ruins. Joe and Anné immediately recognized this as Atlantean
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Together, these chronicled the rise of the Inca, including a very significant section where Viracocha was plainly depicted detaching his face and giving it to Pachacuti, just prior to the latter’s rise to power which was bloodily narrated later on.
As they were reading at the north end, Joe could discern mumbling and weeping coming from the next area. Following the sounds, they discovered the last section of the temple, which had clearly once been its sanctum or holy of holies. The walls were plain, bare stone, but had empty holes where large nails appeared to have been wrenched out. These would have held on large golden panels, worked in intricate and beautiful designs; long plundered and melted down into clumsy coins by the conquistadores.
In one corner huddled a man, in tattered brown clothes, clearly utterly insane and in the last stages of malnutrition and dehydration. Empty water bottles and ration packs were scattered around him. His dogtags identified him as one Johann Wehrer, assigned to Nachtwölfe. Joe spoke to him quietly in his own language, trying to get a reaction, but only succeeded in winding him tighter into his own misery. There were several dark comments suggesting that a bullet in the head was the best medicine for him, but others weren't so sure - espeically in light of what else they discovered in the room.
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The entire far wall, which had been blank underneath the long-vanished gold, had a massive circular design of enormous intricacy marked out on it; it was still faintly glowing the distinctive Nachtwolfe blue, though it looked to be fading. Multiple circles of symbols surrounded a blank circle 10’ across. The symbols were all completely different to anything else that’s been seen locally, Germanic in appearance – Marcus and Cyril recognized them as Norse runes, though neither were able to translate them. They appeared to have been scribed within the last month or thereabouts.
Marcus had his suspicions as to what it was, but application of the Voorish Sign was enough to confirm; it was a Gate. The clues to the incantations to open it could be in the inscriptions, but it was unlikely that anyone this side of Arkham would be able to read them. If they could be read, the Gate could possibly be opened or reproduced; but nothing could be done here.
Nachtwölfe had made their escape with Viracocha's Mirror; for the first time, the team had failed!
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Session Date: 4th March 2020 |
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