Turns out, the two-part foray into Dark Sun has become a three-parter, at least.
We had 3 players - Strum, Bishop Crane, and Ug. Before I forget, here is another awesome review of Pulp-Drenched Cities of Cha'alt. "Stream of consciousness on acid," indeed, hoss.
As the tangerine-hued sky darkned to a burnt-orange, the PCs saw a number of ancient and massive pillars sticking out of the sand. Each was 30-feet from another of its kind, and there were dozens of them, all over the desert. They made for good campsites, at least that's what the one-eyed whore Nyla said as the adventurers' approached on their giant lizard.
Two groups were camped upon arriving, so the PCs decided to camp in-between. Setting up a watch system, Ug soon smelled sand-fish cooking at the campsite towards the east. Before long, Ug and pucha'ata followed their nose, and asked to be admitted into the neighboring camp so they could eat something. The supplies they had were zoth, zoth-zero, crayons, weapons, and drugs - no food.
As Ug ate and talked with these Athas elves, reciprocating their hospitality by offering his new friends crayons to eat. The waxy taste was, apparently, the feature, not a bug.
Meanwhile, the other two were sleeping soundly when a quiet rumbling soon turned into vibrational tremors. At that point, Strum woke up, thinking a sandworm or something similar might be stirring nearby. Then, he saw movement around the closest pillar to their camp. He woke Crane up and the two converged on the humanoid who immediately gave himself up, saying that he was a mul (have dwarf and half man) slave who would love the chance to serve such prominent and wealthy masters as themselves.
They were strangers in a strange land and saw the value in taking this mul with them. I blanked on a name for this half-dwarven slave who stood before them, short, stocky, bald, and muscular. So, I decided that it's customary on Athas for a new master to name or rename his recently acquired slave. Mul became Donkey, which soon became Don Quixote or just Don.
Since the party had lost their templar tag-along last session, Don would steer them round the cultural curves, so to speak. Eventually, they all ended up at the camp with sand-fish (Strum put Ug's crayon sharing to shame by letting all 7 elves have a go with his one-eyed whore), seeing the electrical storm flash lightning - fuchsia and chartreuse lightning, which is rare in these parts... perhaps a sign?
Turns out, these elves were also going to the temple of absent divinity. They had a prophetic scroll and demonic cube, both with infernal-glyphs, that foretold a great change in the balance of power on Athas. Why not travel together, the PCs thought, especially since they could probably use the scroll and/or demon box at some point.
So, Don moved all their stuff to the new camp, and they slept until morning, then continued their journey to the temple. About halfway there, the PCs' giant lizard stepped on something that didn't sound like the familiar sound of reptile-paws on sand. Disembarking to check it out, they found a metal hatch in the sand. At first thinking it was a starship of some kind, they opened it and jumped down into a cave (with the help of dried intestines, serving as rope).
It was a large, irregularly shaped oval that contained a small tunnel the PCs would have to crawl through, a whole bunch of lightless and lifeless crystals embedded in the cave wall, and a three-sided golden monolith or obelisk towards the center with an eye formed into each side of its golden exterior.
Ug tried to move the gold obelisk but couldn't. Eventually, it spoke to him telepathically, telling him that it was too weak to regular the doorways of time and space - the soul energy of the crystals required the death of the void-black succumbing (or Great Old One as the PCs know it on Cha'alt) to revitalize them.
Their current mission was to awaken Keelta'anpa'adraj from his slumber, not to help the sorcerer-king, nor assassinate this magnificent creature (as Bishop Crane calls the Old Ones). But if Keelta'anpa'adraj ended up dying inadvertently, knowing the crystals would be recharged was good knowledge to have.
Before leaving this cave, Crane summoned a fruitie to travel down the small tunnel and report back what he saw - man-made horrors beyond comprehension... several humans were giving insect-folk piggy-back rides. Hearing that the tunnel widened as it went, and wondering if there was something valuable or noteworthy down that way, Crane and Ug went in to see for themselves. Sure enough, the thri-kreen rape-gangs were doing their dirty work. And this is what was heard. Trying to back out quietly, they were spotted, but Ug used his fire stick and Crane his blaster, taking 4 of the 12 out, which made the praying-mantis folk back off so the two could make an expeditious retreat.
Once reunited, they eventually made their way up to the surface, making a mental note of where this hatch was so they could find it again, if need be.
Continuing on with the Athas elves riding a giant insect behind them, they eventually came to the temple. Deciding to sleep just outside as it was nightfall again, the early morning was disturbed by a living, floating, platform with tendril-roots hanging down as it was driven by the 3 psions standing on top of it.
Eventually, they landed, the psionic-warriors jumped off and faced down the PCs. One was fire, another ice, and the last storm - each having a corresponding opal embedded in their forehead. Several rounds and saving throws later, the PCs were damaged but not dead, nor encased in ice. Each opal was removed upon the psion deaths. Strum took the fire opal, keeping it for later (he hadn't decided where to place it yet), Crane took ice, attaching it to Kaltha'alax which would give him an additional 1d6 cold damage and on a critcal-hit, would encase his opponent in ice (save to avoid). That left the storm opal for Ug who embedded it into his own forehead successfully (we rolled to make sure). Once per day, he can blast an opponent with a 6d6 lightning storm (save for half damage). If he wants to keep using it, it costs him a d6 in damage with an additional d6 every time he uses it until the next day when it resets. So, if he used it 3 times in one day, the first one is free, the second would be 1d6 damage, and the third would be 2d6 damage to himself.
The temple was half-buried in the desert, an amber basilica on top and the lower exterior of the temple was fashioned out of dried lizard skin. Inside, the PCs found the place was in disarray... smashed altar, tentacled pillars full of cracks with big chunks taken out, braziers that hadn't seen any amber-lotus in weeks, and a spiral staircase going down in the center. Looking down, the PCs noticed a gigantic boulder preventing anyone from going up or down.
A lonesome priest named Maddox was the keeper of the temple, waiting until the Old Gods returned, but after a century or more, even he didn't really believe the Gods would come back. Maddox had been maimed (his left-side shoulder and arm were basically useless and he walked with a limp) during a battle that took place just a few years ago when templars had ransacked his temple and crippled him due to criticism of sorcerer-king Jethryk's frequent attacks on neighboring city-states.
He called the network of tunnels and caves below the temple the Moshtobah caves (moshtobah meaning unattainable riches from below), claiming there were supposed rumors of a godlike entity slumbering deep under the absent divinity.
In exchange for a few minutes with Strum's one-eyed whore, Maddox promised the adventurers something that was left behind in the holy of holies for cataclysmic emergencies. The PCs agreed as Maddox took the prostitute into the confessional for a good time after showing Ug the cabinet doors that opened into a hole in the rock. Not feeling very optimistic, Ug put his hand into the hole, felt something, and withdrew a thermal detonator. Upon activating it and throwing it down the stairway, the boulder smashed into several pieces, allowing them to explore what was beneath the temple... hopefully finding the sleeper.
I forgot until just now the phrase that everyone uses in Dark Sun (according to me)... "May the sleeper never awaken." Next session I'll have to spam it to bits & pieces!!!
I was able to utilize the new map that I'd been working on, slowly, for a couple months because of Kickstarter rewards which always takes up a ton of my free time. They started at the center and worked their way outward, hearing a woman humming or singing to herself as she tidied up her cave.
She was alone, not having access to the temple above, but occasionally mixing with the other natives down here. She mentioned a wild story, her purpose, to check on the interdimensional webbing of the cosmic spider, A'araknar-Thule, making sure he didn't come back and begin eating the reality of their world.
After telling her about the lonely priest above, she left to check the temple out, warning the adventurers not to look in her special box in the corner of her cave. Of course, as soon as she left, that's exactly what the PCs did. They found a big box of porn - battery-operated devices, specialty magazines (such as Hot Scales Monthly and Spicy Iguana), lube, ball-gags, dildos, her hand-written sex journal, the works.
She had access to the interdimensional strands via a scroll that would open a portal. Being handed the scroll and told they were now in charge of that particular mission, if and when she came back, they spilled a couple drops of blood and read from the scroll. A portal did, indeed, appear.
The PCs peered into it, saw the webbing that could definitely have been made by a gigantic cosmic spider, were careful not to mess with it too much on the off-chance that vibrations would actually call A'araknar-Thule to them, cut a "crossbeam" strand, and then Ug threw in one of the pink sexual devices from her box, hoping it would stick to the web (and it did), finally using the purple labyrinth glyph inside the portal just to see what would happen...
At that point we were running out of time, and so I paused the game so I could think through the potential ramifications of opening a portal to the purple labyrinth within another interdimensional space.
Enjoy,
VS
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