Event Horizon/Fury Road
Ward calmed a distraught and confused Du Va Leigh and then approached the stewards and other vislae, asking, “What is all this about, then?”¶
“We need to find a way back onto our route,” Annalise said. “I don’t know how we ended up here.”
Rhea and Jeremiah conferred and deduced, by means magical or otherwise, that they were in the Fartown neighborhood of Gatesmithe, largely given over to leftover munitions from the War. Ward started sketching out some rough directions to get them back to Arca.
“I could see about summoning a demon scout for us to navigate by,” Marweg proposed.
A stately shadow fell over him. “I’ll see to that,” Gertrude replied. Annalise volunteered to help; Marweg was too stunned by his superior to speak. The front door closed behind Angela as she left.
“Attention, please, esteemed guests.” Jeremiah clapped thrice to regain some measure of control.
The guests slowly drew back from gawking at the ruins outside. Marweg took up a post by the door and turned back a couple attendees seeking to exit. The nervous conversations died down, and the attention pivoted to Jeremiah.
“I apologize for this inconvenience. It seems the parade has deviated from its projected course, and we find ourselves in unfamiliar terrain. Everyone should remain calm, stay indoors, and enjoy the entertainment.”
He forced a reassuring smile but could see a wave of panic overtaking his guests.
Gertrude approached him, her ever-present bees following. “Let me step in. I’ll settle things with your guests. You have more urgent responsibilities.”
Jeremiah nodded, mute, and retreated as Gertrude began issuing directions with a reassuring sternness. He approached the other stewards as Mr. Whiskers was saying, “We need to awaken the other houses to defend the parade. Gather who you trust to aid and head outside.”
“Let’s do it!” Smick clapped Marweg’s shoulder enthusiastically.
“I am not suited to this sort of thing,” Marweg protested.
“You’ll do fine.” Smick replied. “Why, you prevented some of the partygoers from bolting off just a moment ago.”
“That was merely attempting to prevent panic! You ask me to see to defenses, awaken houses! I’m a simple man, I keep a menagerie. . . . I’m no good at dealing with dangerous environments.”
Lucerin approached them both. “We need to hurry, you two,” she said. “Let’s move to the front.”
Smick mumbled something under his breath and then lifted his hand .* “You’ll be just fine. Just you come along with me and let’s help Angela up at her house, shall we?”
Marweg’s feet complied before his head knew quite where he was, and by the time he realized that he’d changed his mind and was ready to help, he, Smick, and Lucerin were already outside Minton House and walking toward the front of the parade.
The fountain was gone, the city was gone, everything seemed to be going wrong. And now this manicured lawn was romping through the ruined neighborhood Winstead had just begun to get used to.
She was traveling toward where she came from, but it was somewhere else now. And the mist played tricks on her mind. She could have sworn she saw the scenery move.
Suddenly she felt magic fall on her, and her mind filled with clarity. She felt she could avoid any danger that might arise. She scrambled to her feet.
“You have not chosen the right day for a visit!” snapped a sharp and aggravated voice. Winstead looked up to see a perfectly presented picture of a midcentury housewife standing over her, an exact fit for the perfect lawn and its perfect house. “I’m Angela. This is my house. Now get up, there’s trouble. Are you able to assist?”
Winstead looked up and blanched as the figures coming through the mist took shape.
Looming in the distance was a monstrous worm-shaped siege weapon, its surface glistening with an oil-slick coating that reflected the meager light in an ugly iridescence. Before it ran two other figures, quickly closing on the house. One was a tall albino woman with a death-mask expression and curved white knives where her hands ought to be. Her torn skirts were alive with activity, and Winstead could have sworn she saw cats peeking out from beneath them. The other—
Winstead gasped. The figure approaching her washer. Or, at least, it had her legs and face, but between the detached halves writhed a mass of worm mouths that spilled out and around like a perverse tutu. It grinned, flickering in and out of reality as it ran.*
“A siege worm, and a feral shepherd and a hellminth: cyst spawn. We’re in an ordnance zone! I swear to the suns, I will relegate Annalise to note-taking for a year!” the other woman seethed. And then she swirled, spinning around and shooting out two sets of shimmering wings. Her clothes billowed and blew as though animated by a great breeze, and her hands, now six-fingered, stretched out toward the horizon. The face which had been beautiful like a marble statue now looked beautiful like an eagle in flight, and Winstead felt like a rabbit as it turned toward her.¶
“Make way for the parade,” spat the Stamwhence Angel.
Shouting at waterfalls seemed more ridiculous every moment.
“Are you absolutely sure these houses can help?” Jeremiah asked hoarsely over the perpetually crashing water.
“That’s what they told me,” Annalise said. “We just need to find the right trigger to make them wake up.” She screamed, “Wake up, Vici!” once more in frustration.
“Maybe we need to go inside?” Jeremiah suggested. “Maybe it’ll hear us better there.”
Annalise nodded and abruptly strode through the front entrance of the waterfall. Jeremiah followed uncertainly, but the flowing floors supported his weight with a gelatinous shiver. The walls poured down with a quiet roar.
After a few attempts it became clear the house was just as deaf on the inside. Realizing they were getting nowhere, Jeremiah shook his head.
“But it does have a mind?” he asked. Annalise nodded. Jeremiah settled himself. “Then I’m going to try to get into its head.” He took a deep breath and, by magic, began to intrude on the dreams of Vici House.¶
Probing the wet walls for sentience, he found a will in the architecture. His mind pushed on it.
Wake up, he called, there’s trouble.
No change.
The parade is in danger. We need to help Angela. Please, wake up.‡
The walls slowly began to shift sideways, and then the whole house gave a lurch. Jeremiah’s eyes snapped open, and he tried to recover his balance. Annalise was already stumbling out the door. Staggering on the shifting floor, he got about halfway there himself before a sheet of water crashed over the entrance in an endless rush, blocking the way. Water cut his feet out from under him and swept him up toward what had once been the ceiling but was now the liquid torso of a massive water elemental.
He felt the link he’d made strengthen, and as he tried to move himself around, he realized he was moving the creature with it. With a laugh he punched the air in delight and thought, To the front!
Vici reared up, curling with a foaming wave, gave a roar like an ocean storm, and surged towards α β γ house at the front of the parade.
Carrie’s chanting inside Rus House grew more intense as Rhea tried to concentrate on the waking ritual. Outside the chalk circle, their cast-off clothing looked odd in the light of the ongoing house fire. Carrie’s eyes began to roll back in her head. She took up the ritual knife and drew it across her chest beneath the collarbone, then held it out. Rhea hesitated only a moment before taking the knife and doing the same.
Their chanting accelerated and the fires above blazed higher and higher seemingly in response. Carrie pointed to Rhea as her head lolled to one side. The earsplitting crackle of burning timber tried to deafen her, and then a concussive thrust buffeted them both as the house burst into a whirlwind of flame and ash.
Rhea and Carrie tumbled to the ground outside Rus’s front doors. Rhea was up first and checked on Carrie, who was breathing but unconscious. Reassured, Rhea looked up.
The roiling vortex of smoke and burning lumber spilled out of itself and landed on the ground where Rus House had stood. It stared with glowing-ember eyes at Rhea, an ash demon of malevolence waiting to be unleashed, yearning for her to direct its violence.
Rhea, naked and trembling with sudden cold and fear, nodded and got to her feet. “Don’t just look at me like that,” she managed. “We’ve got to get to the front.”
As she began to run, trusting the demon would follow, she heard a deathly trumpeting. She looked behind her to see Ward, astride the mûmakil skeleton that had been Sumac House, stomping up the road behind her.
“Isn’t this amazing?!” Ward chortled. “Cole helped me wake it; now I’m an elephant rider!”
“Just hurry!” Rhea cried. “We can chat after it’s all over.”
The worst of it, thought Winstead, is that it’s just waiting there for us.¶
The houses just kept moving toward the siege worm like a conveyor belt of destruction. α β γ house, now passing the worm, had a massive rupture in one side, and Winstead had retreated with the angel and the three called Smick, Lucerin, and Marweg two houses back, which they had called . . . Kingston? she thought as she dodged the knife hands of the feral shepherd.
Smick had added some bulwarks to their personal defenses¶; Lucerin added her own power to bolster Smick’s work, and the joint effort had kept them from direct harm. Marweg had taken control of the hellminth’s mind¶, and now it lashed out at the feral shepherd, thinking it an enemy.¶
The shepherd, oozing pale blood from its eyes, was being pressed on all sides now. It was recovering from the psychic blast the angel had leveled against it, but it looked a little unsteady now. It might only need one more hit!¶
The thought had hardly entered her head when she felt the angel behind her speak. The reverberations of power behind it flared up in Winstead’s body, and with a surge of energy she leapt at the cat lady, dodged a swipe of the knives, and punched its face as hard as she could.
Her fist met bone that felt fragile as a bird’s egg. The colorless face crumpled inward like foil, filling the air with crunching sounds and the yowls of cats. The feral shepherd went limp and collapsed into a shriveling pile of torn and ragged cloth on the ruined ground.
“YES!” Winstead shrieked in jubilation as her fear and excitement hit fever pitch. She barely felt her bloody knuckles as she turned back to the others—and gasped.
Other creatures approached from behind: a living torrent of water followed by a demonic cloud of ash and a skeletal mammoth. She turned again in time to see the chess-rook tower veer to the side and out of the siege worm’s way, leaving Kingston House open to attack. Kingston’s façade peeled away into nothingness as the worm’s attack grazed it.
With one cyst spawn removed, the circumstances seemed marginally better to Marweg, but the second cyst spawn, a hellminth, simply would not listen to him. Even when he could manipulate it to attack the other spawn, he couldn’t seem to get it to land a hit. Grunting in frustration, Marweg told it to attack the siege worm instead.¶
He hadn’t counted on the hellminth’s worms extending their reach.
Everyone in the vicinity ducked or dodged out the way as those mouths extended out in all directions. The siege worm could hardly dodge and barely tried. The cyst spawn landed a satisfying thud against its side, but the moment its limbs made contact they started to wither and decay. It hissed and recoiled from the siege worm, trying to stem the rot’s spread.
Movement drew his attention to Vici as it sent a crashing wave at the siege worm. Jeremiah floated inside, seemingly piloting the aqueous behemoth. This time the worm moved out of the way. The spray rose twenty feet in the air and spattered over everyone. Marweg blinked a few times and cleared his vision just in time to see the Stamwhence Angel land an attack on the worm. The familiar-looking woman beside the angel lined up her hands and sent a blast of magical energy toward her leering cyst-spawn double, but her movement telegraphed her intent and the hellminth went insubstantial, avoiding injury.‡
Winstead, the back of his mind dispassionately supplied, from the meeting. He shook his head irritably and gritted his teeth, beads of sweat beading on his forehead. Marweg tried once more to exert control over the monster. Ignore her, attack the worm, he told it.
The rot creeping up its limbs must have interfered with his influence, for the hellminth lashed at the Paraders instead. The angel and Smick managed to dodge again, but Winstead and Lucerin were not so lucky. Marweg gasped at the sheer pain as the awful worm teeth sank into his arms, trying to tear out a chunk before retreating to the parasitical tutu between the hellminth’s upper and lower halves.¶
Through tears, a detached part of him saw Jeremiah/Vici land a watery fist against the side of the siege worm’s head. It rocked and looked for a moment like it might fall to the ground, but it managed to stay up. The ash demon and the elephant skeleton came roaring up behind and joined the fray of titans, adding the crackle of bonfire and trumpeting to the din of the waterfall.
“We need to retreat,” Marweg called out, beginning to move away.
Winstead heard him but tried for a parting shot at the cyst spawn. Her magical attack missed badly and, instead of hitting the hate cyst, landed right against Vici’s side. It lurched a bit before Jeremiah could stabilize it.¶
As Marweg fell back, he gave one last command to the hellminth: ATTACK THE WORM!!!!
This time the command seemed to register. It turned and made straight for the siege worm, landing a weak blow that only caused itself to wither faster. Its problems were cut short as Ward/Sumac trod on it, leaving a damp soil footprint behind.
As Rhea/Rus shot a jet of Rus’s flame toward the siege worm, Marweg turned and ran to Le Roix, hoping to find some safety in this madness.
Le Roix and those it sheltered were rapidly approaching the titanic battle. The siege worm seemed more interested in attacking the houses than the beings attempting to destroy it. Rhea couldn’t understand why but didn’t question her good fortune. She kept instructing Rus to set the worm ablaze, hoping to land a hit.‡
Jeremiah/Vici managed to knock its head sideways just as Rus called up a massive gout of flame. It was larger than Rhea expected, and the shockwave threatened to blow out her eardrums. The sound of shattering glass behind her told her that every single window in Le Roix had likely been blown to pieces by the concussive force.¶
Sorry, Mr. Whiskers. Rhea winced at the thought of the cat’s objection to his home’s inadvertent redecoration.
Angela landed another blow, and Smick warded off the siege worm’s counterblow, but Le Roix kept approaching the worm. As it passed within reach, the worm dived at it as though to shatter it in one blow.‡
The house made a jaunty sidestep, completely avoiding the attack.
Rhea blinked. That was new. And then she began to panic. Minton House was the next in line, and every guest was about to be smashed to pieces.
“What are we going to do?” she cried. “We can’t just evacuate them into the middle of nowhere like this, can we?”
“But we can’t leave them in there to get crushed either,” Ward retorted. “So unless you have a better plan, we need to get them out of there.”
Marweg, still nonplussed at Le Roix’s show of innate dexterity, shook himself and said, “Couldn’t we wake this one like the others? Maybe it could move on its own.”
Rhea nodded. “Let’s at least try.”
Two minutes later, and far too much closer to the worm, Rhea gave up.
“I can’t communicate with this thing at all,” she said. Behind her, Jeremiah and Vici had made a water wall that held back the siege worm, buying them critical seconds to think.
“Well, let me talk to it a moment,” said Marweg. He leaned over to touch the wooden walls and said, “Minton, you’re in danger. You need to move.”¶
“Hello!” came a friendly voice in his head. “I am Minton House, and I am a proud member of the Stamwhence Parade!”
Marweg put on the stern voice he used when his pets misbehaved. “Minton, this is no time for games. There is a massive siege worm that will try to destroy you. You need to change your direction.”
“I like worms,” the house replied. “They tickle my foundations when I move past. I move past with the parade. I love the parade. I get to feel the soils of the world!”
Marweg let go and turned to Rhea. “This house is as dumb as the bricks it’s made of. I can’t get it to understand anything.”
“Then let’s try this,” Ward said, and drove Sumac House forward. Sumac put its shoulder to the side of Minton House and began to shove, forcing it to follow the path of Le Roix and out of the reach of the siege worm.‡
Ward slid off the mûmakil’s side and began to run. The siege worm crashed down, grazing Sumac’s ribcage as it passed. The house’s back legs turned black and disintegrated, and the whole skeletal form slowly crashed to the ground, black dust rising from the impact as it continued to decay. Ward grabbed at the left forefoot and tore a piece of fibula away before the rot could dissolve it.¶
A muffled cheer came from inside Minton House as they began to pass out of reach of the worm. Behind them, the rest of the parade followed the new path, safely out of reach of imminent destruction.
Winstead was exhausted. They had retreated again to another place in this mad row of houses, this one made of three floating square floors that orbited each other. She stood near Angela, who continued to level attacks against the worm while defending her.
The ash demon had set the worm on fire a moment before, and the smell was disgusting. Winstead felt she might throw up from the nauseating chemical-burn scent that filled her nostrils.
The skeletal elephant had pushed the other houses away from immediate harm, leaving only the water elemental and the demon to fight. As the water creature’s defensive wall broke down, the demon drew in so much air that Winstead found it hard to breathe. It swelled up with power and then deflated, spewing the largest column of flame Winstead had ever seen all along the length of the worm.
The roar of the fire filled her ears, and the stench of the melting sludge overpowered her senses completely. Through her closed eyelids, she saw brilliant red which burst and then died down into a dull glow.
When her eyes opened, there before her was the largest bonfire she’d ever seen. The worm was quickly consumed, turning to ash before her as she watched. She let out her breath, dropped her shoulders, and abruptly slumped to the ground, eyes closed.
With no further attacks on the horizon, the battered and bruised Stamwhence Parade drifted on until the ruined expanse gave way to the Ulthward District, characterized by a dramatic reduction in abandoned architecture and an increase in blissfully naive pedestrians and taxis and rickshaws of all sorts to be eagerly solicited by exhausted partygoers.
Ward and Rhea left together for their home in Arca, but as Marweg began to say his goodbyes, he noticed Winstead standing off by herself and pulled her aside.
“You may not remember—Marweg, from Arca. We met at Phantom Life? You seem familiar beyond that, however. Have we met before? Perhaps in Shadow?”
Her confusion was evident. Marweg took pity on her and said, “I realize this has been a terrible start to your time in Satyrine. Perhaps now isn’t the time for social graces. Tell you what: I know a good library in Fartown, Grynn’s Gramarye. Why don’t we meet there soon? It could help you get more settled into the Actuality again, perhaps answer some questions?” Winstead agreed.
Before taking his own leave, Marweg remembered a detail that hadn’t registered fully in the heat of battle. They hadn’t been asked to awaken the tower, and it had seemed to evade damage with ease. Overwhelmed with curiosity, he made his way toward it alone, laid a hand upon its stone, and greeted it.
“Hallo, I hope you don’t mind my candidness, but I wondered whether you might tell me what you were? It’s been a very strange day, you see.”
There was a silence. While he had yet to succeed in eliciting speech from objects, Marweg had found general success in determining their affective dispositions. He was shocked and joyful, therefore, when the tower replied.
“It has been some time since anyone spoke to me as you do. I am the Rook.”
Marweg smiled. “Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure. But what are you? Are you elemental? Angel? Demon?”
Marweg could’ve sworn the voice nearly smiled. “No,” it replied, a little sadly, “I am like you. I am vislae.”
Angela brought Winstead inside to clean up. When Winstead could not provide a proper residential address, Angela’s husband, Brian, searched records in the Noösphere about Winstead’s past in Indigo. They offered a spare room at Kingston in the interim, which Winstead eagerly accepted.
Two days later she approached Winstead with surprisingly good news. The deed to the waterfall house (Vici) was owned by a trust in Winstead’s name. They had approached the current occupant, Annalise, about renting merely a portion of the house After a short discussion and negotiation, Annalise agreed, and Winstead walked into a waterfall that she could largely call her own.
Angela’s commentary on what it meant to be a homeowner and thus part of the Stewards of the Parade didn’t really register with her. All Winstead knew was that she now had an anchor point in this strange world, and she could sleep with the knowledge that there was a place in it for her.
¶ Interaction test success, with a bonus from the Cane of the Kindred.
* This gave Marweg an incantation.
* A siege worm (Secrets of Silent Streets), hellminth (Teratology), and feral shepherd (The Path)
¶ Angela casts Prescient Defense on Winstead.
¶ Jeremiah casts Dream Intrusion to enter Vici’s dream to speak to it.
‡ Looming Shade: Blue Sun—Threat from an unseen quarter, a bad omen.
¶ GM Note: Forgot to apply passive tests that cause anguish.
¶ Incantation that buffs defense for everyone who can see him. What did Lucerin cast?
¶ What did Marweg cast here?
¶ Marweg casts an illusion in the mind of the hellminth.
¶ Angela cast Judgment on the feral shepherd, inflicting anguish. The helminth’s damage to Winstead was mitigated by Prescient Defense.
¶ Angela gives Marweg +5 Resist (how?). Winstead’s Prescient Defense is exhausted.
‡ Ghostly Presence: Indigo Sun—Something from the past, something forgotten, arises in the present.
¶ Marweg and Winstead each take a wound.
¶ Winstead’s attack used sortilege and generated magical flux, giving her a vex in her sorcery pool. The attack fails and deals the damage to Jeremiah/Vici instead of the hellminth.
‡ Questing Knight: Grey Sun—Success is within grasp with determination, at the end of a long journey.
¶ Magical flux effect. Worm takes a wound.
‡ Unknowable Truth: Pale Sun—Affirms a conclusion, and futility regarding a plan. Otherwise, the answer requires more searching, or searching elsewhere.
¶ Marweg uses Psychometry
‡ Savage Sword: Red Sun—Conflict is imminent, blood will be shed. Must use violence to succeed.
¶ Angela gives Winstead +5 Withstand