| Planet: A Survivalist's Guide (1 of N as they say) |
[Nov. 2nd, 2008|09:02 pm] |
Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?
DAY ONE, morning. Yesterday's spore launcher attack only underscores the urgency of our mission. With Commander Zhauronn incapacitated, Valley lacks the strong leadership which has been so crucial to our survival these past thirty years. Colonel Santiaggro's decision to order out a third expeditionary force could not have been an easy one, but with steeled resolve we bid our loved ones farewell and ventured north over the rolling hills towards the rumored colony led by the great general Yang. The hills show more of the fungal life that only in pathces covers the plains to the east of Valley, but Zarakhov's sending indicated Yang's camp was to the north (or so I am told). It is slow going as we venture forward.
I cannot shake a certain sense of dread; from the first expedition, twenty-nine years ago, only twenty percent of the scout teams returned to Valley, and none returned from the second expedition. Who knows what terrors we might face?
DAY ONE, noonish. While pressing through the fungal wilderness, we encountered our first group of hostiles. Apparently once humanoid, these wretches had swathed themselves in crude clothing made from pressed fungal stalks, and fallen under the sway of a massive growth, a large boil of the xenofungus I dub the mindstealer, for as we engaged it and its minions the monster stole our enemies and used our own spells and techniques against us! Fortunately the mindstealer seemed more vulnerable to my psychic spells than most creatures. Along with its power to magically extract our memories and magic, which it used sparingly, the mindstealer exhibited the power to swipe at melee combatants with its gigantic maw (why a fungus has a maw I don't know).
More worrisome perhaps were the thing's poor minions. While I have never seen any of Toril-That-Was's native humanoid lifeforms other than humans, dragonborn, and bugbears, I have studied the anatomical diagrams left behind by our departed savants, and I can confidently state these were no dwarves, elves, halflings, tieflings, eldadrin, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, or shadar-kai. Their bodies were pink and hairless, with a surprising lack of differentiation -- I saw five of these mutons, and they might have been identical quintuplets. Further, they resisted my psychic assaults. Each was nearly seven feet tall, built heavier than a typical human but leaner than a typical bugbear. Though their bodies were clearly humanoid, much of their organs and innards appeared to have been replaced by fungal constructions, centered on a highly magical pearlescent orb lodged in the base of the muton's brain. We collected these pearls -- and a slightly larger, bowl-shaped object deep inside the mindstealer's innards. Though most of the mutons went down easily, I saw them rise again, knitting themselves together from the very stuff of Planet, and attack again. It was simple enough to lodge an axe in these zombies' brains, but I can only hope this property is not shared by more dangerous examples of the fungal life.
It's disturbing to imagine these wretched creatures, and this dangerous fungoid monster, so close to Valley. Have the forces of Planet established a perimeter hemming us in, one we're just now penetrating?
DAY ONE, afternoon. In the distance, while pressing through the fungal wilderness, we espied a group of three mutons accompanied by two quadrupedal entities I could not even attempt to recognize at that distance -- smaller than a bugbear, as large as an unusually small human perhaps. We gave them a wide birth, remembering Zhauronn's instructions.
I wonder: are these humanoids native to this Planet, or are they interlopers like us? Something in me leans towards the latter hypothesis, but I have no reason to be certain. In a visceral way I despise them.
DAY ONE, evening. By all the dead gods of Toril-That-Was, I cannot fathom this.
We have stumbled upon an artificial structure the likes of which I have never seen. In the center of a deep bowl-like depression in the landscape, perhaps two hundred feet deep, we have found a stone obelisk easily one hundred and fifty feet high, perhaps fifty feet square at its base. The exterior is alternately smooth and covered with fine carvings which seem to depict examples of the native life -- fungal stalks and such. The fungus covering the ground of the crater is unusually tough and fine; Rogash had difficulty ripping off a hunk. About a third of the way up, each of the four faces of the obelisk shows a shallow indentation which appears to be a different type of stone than the single huge block of the rest of the obelisk. There appear no other entrances. Throg is going to attempt to climb the obelisk
(Later) After several minutes of attempt, the slick stone of the obelisk seems to prove too much for Throg -- but a door has opened up on one side, perhaps as a result of his handling of the monolith? We examined that wall before and saw no door, but truly now there is a passage. Within, however, there is only another wall: mortared stones, lighter and of a different type than the monolith itself, wholly blocking what may be a passage leading inward.
(Later still) Throg has smashed down the wall with his great maul, and we can see inside. Within the monolith there is a single large chamber, reaching upwards as far as my light-magic can illume, with only a shallow depression less than ten feet in diameter marking the inside. We investigated, but as soon as we stepped onto the depression crossbows popped out of alcoves high up in the walls and began spitting bolts towards us -- apparently traps are not the lost technology we in Valley have assumed? Throg was wounded by the bolts, and we feared the worst, but it was only a flesh wound. He'll sleep well tonight. Grog and I examined the bolts we pulled from him -- they are made from fungal stalks, hardened in some manner foreign to me.
(Later still) By throwing rocks onto the depression, Grog was able to induce something new to happen: the depression began to sink into the floor. It is a sort of elevator-platform. We leapt onto the platform and lay among the rocks, trying to avoid the hail of bolts which spewed from the hidden crossbows above and succeeding only partially.
Beneath the monolith we discovered a hidden chamber featuring a strange "altar" in the form of a translucent pipe of xenofungal mass, through whick a red-black bile flowed out onto the floor and then out of the chamber through a concealed drain, making a puddle. The puddle was protected by an odd clear membrane which we did not disturb (fearing the worst). Before we investigated further, we were set upon by a pair of shadar-kai -- the first refugees from Toril-That-Was we have yet encountered!
The meeting did not go well. The shadar-kai accused us of blasphemy (though surely none of the dead gods of Toril-That-Was care what we say or think in this thrice-cursed Planet) and asserted we would not long live after defiling the "blood of Planet." We fought, and we did indeed nearly die, but at last one of the shadar-kai "Planet cultists" was dead and the other captured. The captured cultist proved a mad fanatic, unwilling to explain anything or answer any of our questions, even under threat of death. Finally, sickened by his ranting, Ragosh bashed his brains in and we confiscated their gear, which was in many ways superior to our own (for instance, much of it is magical, and actual magic, not the strange faded magic of the supposed magic-items from Toril-That-Was which we have for use as tradegoods). You own nothing you cannot defend, by force as necessary.
Along with two suits of magical leather armor, two pairs of funguswalker boots, and two amulets of neural amplification we recovered two small bags of Planetpearls -- perhaps the cultists use these for currency? -- as well as their strange shadar-kai "spiked chain" weapon and a magical greatsword. We also found a ritual book, containing two rituals I have never seen before "item-weave" and "Planet-bond." On Toril-That-Was, magical items took their strength from some sort of magical telluric energy network called "the Weave," or so I am told -- could this ritual contain the secret to restoring our defunct magical relics? More study is needed.
DAY ONE, night. After our battle with the cultists, we discovered a tunnel leading a short distance from the "blood of Planet" room to a dead-end we could not open or penetrate. Leaving the monolith to camp for the night, we discovered that though we had rested for only a little while within it, we felt as invigorated as if we had rested for an extended period, with sleep and everything. I myself am certain I could cast Phantom Chasm again if need be; could this be the "holiness" the cultists had spoken of?
Thus revitalized I have had a revelation: I can use the largest Planetpearl, the deformed and bowl-shaped one, as a focus for my magic. I will need to affix it to my implement for it to work properly, but...
Tomorrow, we should reach Yang's camp. I cannot begin to guess what or who we will find there. At this point I would not be shocked by anything. |
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