5th: Battle at Blood Alley, (Played Arpil
6, 1997)
Grandfather discovers that Ernesto Palagio, leader of the Palagio merchant family of Avalon has been captured by the Bretwalde of Blood Alley. Grandfather wants Mr. Lupo and the party to affect a rescue before the ransom is paid.
Adventure Background, Adventure
Outline
Players: Ken McKinney, Sam Jennings, Scott Chelette, Ron Shigeta
Summaries: Shigeta, Jennings,
McKinney
The Secret Orders: Grandfather gives the leader of the expedition a sealed tube with orders. The tube is to be opened only if Merchant Ernesto is rescued alive. Under any other conditions the tube (and the orders) are to be returned to Grandfather. If Ernesto cannot be rescued before the ransom is paid, Grandfather still wants him "rescued" if it is possible to have NO Lamberti family connection to the "rescue".
Blood Alley: Old ruined Imperial Naval complex taken over and cursed by the huns during their invasion. The complex is in a natural harbor of a small island surrounded by many other very small islands (rocks jutting from the sea.) The name comes from the blood that covered all these islands during the hun invasion: from the sacrifices and curses they placed throughout the islands. The entire area is generally avoided by all but a few now. These islands are located between the empire and the Four Islands (Rimigi is one of the Four Islands.)
Tauroggen Tribe: Mystic human raiders from coastal lands under teutan influence. The tribesmen are carnivores and believe in blood sacrifice and ancestor worship. About 65 years ago, Bishop Schonhauser (teutan) forced the tribe to leave after an ugly incident of mass sacrifice. Chief Frans Wallenbeck of the Tauroggen ordered a mass sacrifice of all pilgrims of the Prophet who were questing for the holy visions reputed to be found near the sacred tribal graves. The tribe migrated to the haunted Blood Alley at the advise of their shamen and they now live and raid from all the Blood Alley islands. Many of these raiders sell their prizes at Port Royale, the notorious pirate haven.
Port Royale: Notorious pirate haven rumored to be supported by the River Newt Alliance, the Newt Trade Guild, and possibly the Imperial Navy. Pirates from all over the Inland Sea arrive here to dispose of goods and prisoners for ransom. The slave markets in Port Royale have no equal in type and quality of merchandise.
Important Contacts of the Lamberti Family
2 CP: Mr. Lupo, cool-headed problem fixer and hatchet man
* Mr. Lupo is ready to go. He works best alone, but can provide whatever assistance is required.
2 CP: Captain Ingie, pirate captain and trader based out of Avalon
* Captain Ingie will be at Port Royale, if he is on schedule, around the beginning of the adventure. He is a friend of Grandfather's and might be convinced to help the family. Grandfather will write a letter requesting help, just in case his path is crossed.
The Ransom: Rumor from the Palagio family indicate the ransom is about 60K (Silver), half of which must be in gold coin or bars. The ransom is due in Port Royale in five weeks, and when received Ernesto will be released in Port Royale within a couple weeks.
None Yet
Through the Gauntlet at Blood Alley
The best laid plans... is not what we have here.
"I ain't paying that much for no two bit muffler!"
"Diction."
"I'm Not going to pay a lot for that MUFFLER!"
"You gotta get you're point across."
"I'm not GOING to PAY a LOT for that MUFFLER!"
"No." Dirka grimaced. "Yelling at someone and 'convincing' them are two different things. Think of Frankie when he's pulling the wool over."
"I am not going to pay a lot for that muffler, or your knees could get broLuca."
" Better. I think your elocution lessons are coming along, Reggie, but I think there's something you just don't get. You gotta have it here", the goodfella grabbed his belt and tugged it upwards firmly. "Not here."
We looked up from our discourse over the fine points of verbal presentation as my cousin Frankie entered the room. Every time I'm seeing Frankie lately I'm really glad, because it means his big POW sorcerous highly principled wife hasn't blown him away. In addition to which he had disappeared about a month ago winkin' and sayin' in a sideways way that he was going to get an 'unsightly blemish removed'.
Now I see him and he looks like hell. "Frankie! What you been up to? Where you been?"
"Eh I don't wanna talk about it."
"Why why Frankie? What did you do, did the wife finally track you down and give you an ultimatum?"
"Nah nothin' like that. I went to see the Golden Lotus. The Golden Lotus told me at the wedding to come meditate at his temple and she said the wife wouldn't be telling me what to do all the time."
"That sounds good Frankie."
"And then she kept me there a prisoner for a month."
"That sounds bad, Frankie."
"And then finally she let me go."
"So that's good, Frankie."
"So I went and talked to the Oak Demon Queen and she told me the Lotus put a curse on me."
"That's bad. What curse, Frankie?"
I never seen Frankie pause that long ever in his life. Usually you cannot get this guy to shut up. I remember his mother had to take him for a healing spell across his knuckles every week that year Sister Evangelina worked in the library in school. Finally I'm pestering him and try out a little 'verbal discourse' on him. He must have been dying to tell 'cause I got to him.
"If I tell you, you tell nobody."
"Nobody, Frankie."
"You die if you tell anybody."
"I swear on my mother's grave, Frankie, you know I keep a secret."
This must be really bad.
"Lets just say I wasn't a stand up guy for a while."
"What?"
"The sausage was cold. Little Frankie stayed in."
"No."
"Yes."
"Wow, but the Oak Demon Queen fixed you up."
"Yeah, she fixed me up. Now I gotta do her a favor. I gotta knock off this guy in Traha Minor - some mystic guy. All because I that Golden Lotus freak didn't get what she wanted."
"Why didn't you just give her what she wanted?"
"There are some things you don't do."
I hadn't actually ever heard of anything that Frankie wouldn't do, or at least SAY he'd do. Anyways I decided that maybe I could get away from the daily tutorials day for a while. So I decides I'll go with Frankie and help polish off this guy. None of the boys wanted to go so I can't let him go by himself. Besides a party like that could have some good door prizes.
Frankie, still resourceful as ever, goes to the Gavarga temple of which he is the laziest initiate and blows a snowstorm over the bishop and convinces that him that he, Frankie, should lead a bunch of Gavarga troops and whack this guy who is (suddenly) a big enemy of the crustaceous doctrine. That's called free backups I guess. Or shocktroops.
We hire a boat to the Lesser Trahas and we see on the docks twenty kids. I mean they are the altarboys at the Gavarga temple. I even know one kid, Giuseppe who's dad works in the Lamberti docks.
I insist that we stop by the Oak Demon Queen's and get some One Shot You're Dead (POT 20) blade venom, which Luca gets us cheap. Hopefully it will come in handy. We have a pretty quiet trip to the Trahas. The mark lives up in the hills and the little village just down the path knows him as the librarian.
Hiking up the hill towards this guy's house I'm thinking what a useless mess this is. I mean those vain priests sending along 'expendables' to defend the honor of their sect, bamboozled by Frankie who was in turn bamboozled by not one but two gigantic spirits. Where does it all end? A debt is a debt and that's where they have us. The blood of the family brought me here, I just hope I still have some of it in me on the way back.
Frankie, sounding like he has a plan, takes the blade venom and leaves all of us in the inn of the little village. He is so sure that this is going to go down that we just sit there and wait for him and he strolls off after lunch like he's going to a knitting circle or something.
By nightfall Frankie doesn't show and I'm regretting not making a more elaborate plan. That's when the town constables, four farmers with the word 'Knstbl' written across their overalls, show up and ask me what Frankie was doing up there. He tried to kill one of the librarian's manservants. He didn't even see the librarian. I explain that we brought Frankie up here to rest because he's pretty unstable and I have to go apologize to the man. For some reason these guys are feeling very authoritarian and ask all twenty of us to stay here and wait for the island police from the port. I explain that I will be back for the evening after going to apologize, but they won't have it and I have the altar boys 'explain' the situation to them. They decide to leave town until the other authorities come. That sounded like a good compromise to me
We get up to the guys place and its a little compound and seeing there's a backdoor, I'm thinking about knocking on the front door and then one of the boys tells me there's a back door and what about we all just rush in the back and take the whole place by suprise sweep around look for the holding pen and extract Frankie back out. I must have been subject to a fit of complete stupidity, but we do it.
Disaster. Rush in the back of the place, kill the kitchen help, the altarboys get excited and I try to tell them to sweep to the right and I sweep to the left looking for Frankie. Well before I know it, a lot of the altarboys are wandering around the middle of the courtyard looking confused or under some spell. Then I get attacked by a spirit and though I'm making for the door, I don't get there.
We are held for a few weeks until the family ransoms us back. The librarian knows a few things more than books because he tries to get Frankie to tell him who sent him and when Frankie won't say, he cuts off his right foot and burns the stump. Whatever the Golden Lotus wanted she sure ain't gettin' it now.
Fear of the Red Island
We get ready for the trip. Grandfather says if we spend 30,000 to 50,000 sp to get this done he's happy. Sometimes money is not enough. We are looking around for rangers and magical support. Most people we talk to will come but won't get off the boat. Blood Alley has quite a rep. Last minute Amerigo rushes up to the Baronet's castle for a consultation and tells us we should go to Jullar for mercenaries, that he has contacts now.
Luca wants to go to visit Deena, his 'friend' at the Stone Table on Remigi to get some 'magical help.' So we sweep over there and he comes back to the boat WITH her. She is coming with us and seems totally in to Luca. I meantime went and talked to Gramski, the Rimigi rebel leader. They hadn't moved their camp but it didn't matter because they had no gold left. They spent it on winter food, it seems at double or quadruple cost. They are pretty incompetant for rebels. I think they will be scrubbing the floors of the Tada keep for 'rebellion money' by next winter. So much for them. Guido actually sold them the grain and so its all in the family now.
Port Jullar
The king is pretty generous, gives Amerigo a letter for some crack troops we can hire and then even somebody he thinks can help us map the island. He lives up in the swampy nether regions of the island. We can buy a map off of him showing the major Hun magic sites. This we do and the guy copies off the map from some book in about three hours. The island is a minefield of Hun magic points - dozens of bounds spirits that might suck you up and never spit you out. The Oak Demon Queen coudn't walk a straight line across the island. There was a relatively clear spot where the Imperial complex had been centered and the main keep there, was where the large administrative complex where the Bretwalde and his main guys probably hole up. Where the dungeon is. Right next to a row of longhouses with about 200 warriors.
This guy is obviously a keeper and we ask him if he can come with us. It turns out for a song - 10,000 in grain and foodstuffs for a bunch of starving villagers living on a barren rock off Port Jullar. Still under budget, the sage packs a few things up and we're back to Port Jullar.
The King's other tip was to check out the mercenary troop he hires to guard the pass from Jullar into the Vasth Mountain area, the pass down the temple of the Golden Lotus. Their leader, Captain Piero Calvacante was a battle hardened vetran and he had turned his troop of men into a crack unit, armed to the teeth and immune to the fear of blood (even their own). They had seen it all and didn't seem to be concerned about how bad a reputation an island in the middle of pirate territory could be.
Down at the docks we got one more brave questor (sucker), one Sir Hamarine of Teutan. Sir H can't speak any Teutan, he spends most of his time hanging around the island here, but he longs after action and Capt. Piero gets him to ask us to come aboard. At least he's another suit of armor, so he's on. Later when Frankie finds out that he is the Champion of the Golden Lotus, he wants to kick him off the ship late at night midsea, but we talk him down to at least kicking him off the boat after we finish with Blood Alley.
The Red Island
The island comes up into sight four or five days later, I don't remember. On the way out Sir Hamarine and the sage know each other. He says the sage is really the retired Imperial General Bunn.
Blood Alley itself is surrounded by a ring of little rocks and smaller islands. We shore the boat up behind one of them since it is the middle of the day. Come nightfall, a rainstorm has come up on the island and 'Merigo wants to pull into the wilderness side of the island to drop off the General or push him in with the dinghy, but Gen'l Bunn refuses. He wants to swim in from here. 'The Captain' (he doesn't want us to call him Amerigo anymore, he's 'The Captain') doesn't believe him and orders the Graffin in towards the island to do a quick drop off.
"You will drown swimming in from here." says 'the Captain'.
"They will see the ship." says the general.
And so forth.
As we're coming in I guess the General gets his idea that we're close enough and jumps off the edge of the ship. 'Merigo yells some orders to him about something, he waves and swims off.
Well come morning, the General is climbing back on board the ship. He rushes to his cabin and writes abunch of things down. Then he gives us the briefing.
The back end of Blood Alley is pretty much uninhabited with some lookouts posted along the ridge of mountains up the middle of it with runners. The island is covered with big magical danger zones -like the Golden Lotus chained up and fed a diet of SuperGro and ugly pills. It doesn't seem likely that we can even cross the pirates own compound, because it is swarming with nasty magics. He found a tunnel to the well house from the big house. The back end of the administration building has collapsed down to the first story and could be climbed easily and it looks like there is a place to land the boat just over a pretty steep but climbable ridge just a few hundred meters from the big house.
We decide to attack that night, but the shaman has been probing the island during the day and he comes to tell us there is another hitch.
The Island Heart
He explains that on top of the ridge there is a stone structure where rests a mana heart. This mana heart collects from the living depths of the island and circulates it over the whole island. Some one who may have attuned it will be able to see the movements of every spirit (including living people) within two kilometers of the island. General Bunn has a special condition which allows him to not interact with or be seen by any spirit, but all of us would certainly be seen coming up to the island in the Graffin. Fortunately, Deena knew a lot about such land hearts since the Dolman was the same sort of thing. She told us that if the heart wasn't well guarded, it would be a simple thing for someone to break the attunement by breaking the heart's physical manifestation, which would appear to be a beating heart in the stone.
Well it was a given that the General was the best man for the job. He had made it clear that he was not going to go back on the island, that he wanted nothing further from us and was holding us to our word. The Lamberti word, as with most merchant families is flexible, subject to further negotiation, and we all applied ourselves the way we knew how. Luca called the General a coward and Frankie tried to throw him overboard. Thus it was that our most subtle arguments failed and the General called everyone on board the ship to the deck and announced that his honor had been stained and went to sulk in his cabin.
Fortunately, there is another sucker born every minute and Hamarine and the General must have been born at least 60 seconds apart. Sure that the attuning shaman wouldn't notice just one more spirit coming and going from the island, Sir Hamarine agreed to go. So we wait off shore in the boat, making out plan.
A Better Plan
After of hours of negotiation, this is how we lay out our plans. The Big House is shaped like a quad with a huge hole in the back door. Assume that suprise is not possible, start an armed sweep of the quad with two companies around each arm of the building with the Vasth Pass Company and Capt Piero on one side and all of us with some of the regular-kind of mercenaries along the other arm of the building looking for the dungeon entrance and making sure we're not flanked.
Go in the back door, sweep along the corridors looking for where they hold the prisoners, eliminating everyone we see. What an excellent plan I think. The only thing we're missing is a gaggle of choir boys.
It works, in a way. After the Shaman sees the observation field around the island go down, its an hour or so before dawn. The boat glides up to the island ridge with a few bumps and all of us scramble over the ridge. In the empty, open space from the ridge to the building, about 200 meters, we lose two regular troops to spirit attacks. As we climb over the wall into the compound its really quiet and we split into the two arms of the sweep. We find no more than three warriors in a patrol which 'Merigo and some of the others take out. In fact we reach the front door and bar it without losing more than two more men to spirit posession. The place is full of gnawed bones and pieces of human corpses. In the far corner we can see a pitched battle happening, in the dark. Our forces rush up to the corner and manage to cut the retreat of the last fifteen or so of the house defense. This corner also has the stairway down and Capt Piero quickly points to five of his guys to hold the corner down with us and they rush down the stairs followed by Deena, Luca, and Frankie.
What was down in the dungeon must be hard to tell because we only get it in pieces. Wells overflowing with madness spirits, living gnawed corpses chained into the wall and held in very small pens, an iron maiden that twists space. They find Ernesto Palagio in a room with about a dozen others where they torture people day and night with fire and whips. When they come back up, Luca is leaning on Deena with ichor and blood all over him, Frankie is over Dirka's shoulder, posessed, spitting angry spirit speech and Capt. Piero has a rope tied to a dozen walking corpses, one of which he says is Ernesto.
On the way back out, we sweep back looking for the sentries we left by every other door and those who fell posessed to the mad spirits of Blood Alley. We recover a couple of the Vasth Mountain troops and get back to the ship, without any more human interference, though what befell the sentries, none of can say, nor dare guess.
General Bunn is the one who insists on going back personally for Sir Hamarine, who never showed up. We are so weakened and the magical field has gone back up around the island that we dare not land again, so he jumps off the ship and later in the afternoon lights a signal fire from the shore.
The Graffin is caught in dead calm as we run towards the shore and Luca and I go out on the dinghy to get him. We can see him swimming towards us, dragging an unconcious Sir Hamarine behind him. We pull him aboard the boat and he is covered with some red slime from head to toe, and there are patches of the same on Sir Hamarine. One last gift from Blood Alley. Luca and I manage to scrape much of the slime off our hands, but the last bits have to be burnt with a red hot iron. The knight is uninfected, with just a few patches on his armor, but we wrap the General in linens. Luca is apologizing on bended knee for his brash accusations as the the General passes out.
Epilogue
In Port Royal, Grandfather is quite happy with us. He arranges for Amerigo to marry Ernesto's third daugther, Stella. We release the other rescued people back to their families gratis. The prisoners from the
In Porto Jullar, Captain Piero confides in Luca that he's retiring and going to become a demon fighting sorcery initiate. Luca is not the same either.
They say that magus of Rimigi went to hell and all he brought back four crummy bowls. Luca and the others brought back something else back from the basement of that keep. Through the wall behind my bunk I can hear him rustling around all night long, walking around he isn't sleeping. He is constantly talking about the others left behind. He and Deena seem to have made some jump too and I expect it won't be long before they are married now. What will come of this? Time will tell, but the Lamberti boys that landed on Avalon three and a half months ago are not the same Lambertis I broke bread with earlier this evening.
I spent three months training, for I had begun to see where my skills were lacking, and where they most needed improvement. I spent a month sailing family ships on the goblin grain runs, I learned some new magic and I picked up a few other skills.... I think my cousins Frankie and I have a saying: "Let the merchants do your trading, or you will be destitute. Let the captain plan the attack, or you will be slain like a dog." This saying has rung true in my ears on so many occasions.... but never so much as on the day we raided the Tauroggen pirate island, Blood Alley.
On this occasion, we were assigned by grandpa the task of rescuing Ernesto Palagio, the head of the Palagio family. It was somewhat ironic that we were to rescue him, given this position he occupied..... our families were rivals, and Ernesto's demise would likely have worked to our advantage..... but that clever grandpa had figured out a way for his survival to work out even better.
Ernesto had been captured by the Bretwalde Tribe, who lived on the island, Blood Alley. This island, and this tribe inspired terror in the hearts of even the bravest of fighters.
The island itself had a long history: Hundreds of years ago, it was an imperial island fortress and naval base. So it stood, until the Huns overran, and when they did so, they left such magical curses behind that it could never be inhabited again, even if the Huns were to leave it.... which they did. So, a few hundred years passed by, and eventually the Tauroggen tribe came along. They were somehow able to survive the horrible magical traps and hauntings left behind on this isle, so it made a perfect defensive base for them.
Their primary source of income was flagrant piracy and ransom. They numbered about 800-900, had 8 longboats, 200-300 warriors, several shamen...... they were a force to be reckoned with. Their magic smacked of the Huns who had lived on that island before them, but they tried to live the lifestyle of a Tuton as best they could..... They were bloody with cannibalism.
Grandfather had given me command of the mission, with these standing orders: Rescue Ernesto if possible. If the mission succeeds, break the seal on the tube he had given me and follow out the orders. I had 5 weeks to carry it out. If the mission failed, I was to return to Port Royale and consult with Mr. Lupo regarding plan B.
In preparation for the mission, I consulted with my contact, the Baronette. I asked him where I might hire some ranger mercenaries to do this job. He pointed me to the island of Port Jullar, where he knew the King. He wrote me a strong recommendation of faith, for he had seen my work before, and trusted me. We brought a shaman of the Oakl Demon Queen along with us(, for she believed that Frankie had completed his favor to her, which was false.)
I bought lamellar armor for 20 of my shipsmen, in order that they might better survive a fight, and then set off for Remige. Here, we picked up Luca's woman, Deena. She was a mystic, so we expected she would be useful in combatting the hostile spirits of Blood Alley. This stop took 4 days total.
From Remige, we sailed North to a nearby isle, where I hired 20 skilled heavy spearmen in chainmail, their captain and a very educated ranger. I also gained a volunteer, a knight and champion of the Golden Lotus. My brother and cousins were strongly opposed to the idea of hiring any scout, but this was primarily due to their lack of military experience. All this took two weeks, which was on schedule, but not fast enough to make every preparation possible..... half of our time was up, and we had only hired the force as yet.
So we turned south, and spent a week enroute to Blood Alley. When my ship came within two miles of the island, my scout dove into the ocean, and began swimming. This was a shock.... for not even the best sailors can swim so well. I worried that the mission had gotten off to a bad start, and hid my ship behind a small island while a storm rolled in.
Early the next morning, the scout came walking below deck and began drawing up a map. His description was comprehensive and terrible. He claimed that he would never again return to that isle. We all saw the fear in his eyes, and knew that our mission was not going to be an easy one.
We reviewed plans well into the next day, when our shaman notified us that there was some sort of field around the island, and that our presence could be detected if we were too close. This put our planning to a halt. We had relied on speed and suprise to win our mission, but now we knew we would be visible from the start....
At this point, strong discord arose within the group. I tried to persuade our scout, (it now turned out he was a retired imperial general) to reutrn to the island. I used reason with him, and I think he was inclined to listen more..... but Frankie and Luca grew angry, and began to threaten and insult him. In their brash insults, they burned every last bridge we had with him, and so he would not go.
I gave one last try at persuading him, and he was moved: he would go, but only if Luca and Frankie went to a small island of starving people, and helped distribute food. They grew even more insulting and beligerent. Luca tried to force me to do his part..... to bear the burden of earning his forgiveness. This I would not do, and indeed I question his motives as a brother for making such a demand. For, the original wrong was his, and so should have been the amends.
We had been planning up until now, regarding how to attack this island stronghold. Many plans had crossed our drawing board.... but our last one seemed like it might work, and hotheaded Frankie got things underway, by launching my dingie with the knight. After an hour or so, the shield went down, and we sailed in, retrieving Frankie and sailing around the island to our strikepoint.
We unloaded and split into 3 groups: The family, the mercenaries and shaman and the ship's crew/defenders. We fought our way through the halls of the fortress, coming at last to a pitch battle in the far corner, underground. Our mercenaries had hti them fiirst, and so when we moved in from behind they were unready. We flanked them and took many prisoners. Half of our force remained to interrogate about the location of the prisoners while the other half continued the search.
While interrogating, I found that one of the dead pirates had a shrunken Tuton's head. I kept this. My brother's part of the group went further below, and we held the top of the passage, so they would not be blocked in. Even with a shaman helping us, we had heavy losses to ghosts. We hurried back to the boat, and our headcount was greater with hostages freed than it had been reduced by casualties.
We would have gone back for the missing in action, but we feared them lost, and we were drained of life and strength after such a fight. We pulled out, happy to be alive.... We had rescued Ernesto.
As we fled those pirate waters, we pondered the fate of the Knight who had taken down that shield. (It was already up again...) When our "Scout"/General learned that he was still on the island, he was finally willing to go back. So we boated him back and waited for his signal.
We spotter signal fires and recovered him and the wounded Knight.... there was a foul living blood that smothered them both, and I had to burn some of the deck off my own ship in order to be rid of it. If I ever see another one, or learn that one is deliberately brought near my ship, I will slay it and he who brought it near.
Our success on this mission was phenomenal. It was clinched by my being engaged to Stella, the third daughter of Ernesto. Not only did this enhance our family's power, it also added to my own wealth and prestige.
The Belly of the Beast or Love and Death on Blood Alley
This is an account of one of the most harrowing account of my life. It is also the story of how Dina and I met and forged true love amidst hell and madness.
I will quickly recount the events that transpired between our expedition to Rimigi and our encounters at Blood Alley. After Rimigi, I and my brothers petitioned Grandfather to give us some time to pursue individual pursuits. I chose to spend my time in the service of the Oak Demon Queen, a shamanistic being who was charged with my tutelage in the ways of the spirit world by Vara-Harak, the powerful shaman who was my mentor-to-be.
The Oak Demon Queen summoned up many spirits who jabbered at me endlessly until I learned their tongue. She summoned up others whom I tested myself against and, victorious, stole magic from. In whole my time with her was well-spent.
Sadly, I cannot say the same for the way Francesco spent his time away from the business. I have heard about this whole sordid story 3rd hand, because Francesco doesn't like to talk about things that make him seem dumb on account of his reputation.
I figure everyone has a certain amount of smarts, right? And they dollop them out, day by day, so on the whole they are reasonably quick most of the time.
Well, this arrangement doesn't suit Francesco. He'd rather be the genius who saves the day every now and then, like when he came up with the plan to steal the Spini's boat, and be considerably less clever on other occasions. This was one of those less clever occasions.
So, Frankie decides he doesn't like having to live up to the standards of matrimony. No big surprise, right? Only, it turns out that his wife has a big curse on him that's going to mess him up if he doesn't behave. Now, earlier the Golden Lotus, had told Frankie that she could fix his little curse problem. So Frankie, he heads out to talk to the Golden Lotus and figures she can help him.
Now, nothing comes free with "spiritual beings", and the Golden Lotus is no exception. It develops that what she wants from Frankie in return for lifting the curse is his first-born child, if it is female. Of course, she is a "divine being" and all, so we assume that she already knows the gender of the child.
Frankie refuses in a rare fit of morality, so the Golden Lotus locks him up and tries to brainwash him. This fails too, so she instead curses him with impotence and lets him go.
Now, this is an unacceptable situation to Frankie. So, he goes to the other high-power bigwig he knows, the Oak Demon Queen, who offers to remove his impotence in return for a "favor". This favor, it turns out, is the assassination of a shaman that the Oak Demon Queen doesn't like.
Now killing has never been a moral issue with Frankie, so he thinks that this is a great deal. "Some shaman. How hard can it be?" he thinks. Frankie goes to the Gavarga temple on the island, where he is a sort of initiate-in-absentia, and fast talks the priest there into lending him 20 altar boys, umm, I mean, crack troops. He also talks Reggie into going with him.
Now, the upside of this is that they have no plan, and get captured. Frankie even gets his foot cut off. So we ransom them back for a lot of money. Frankie is still on the hook for this shaman-killing deed, as far as I know.
After all of us spend our time in various ways, we get back together and start making plans for this dangerous mission that Grandfather wants us to do.
There's this island called Blood Alley. It was taken over by the Huns when they invaded hundreds of years ago, and they cursed it so thoroughly with traps that just walking around on it is certain death. There are holes to the spirit world that will suck you over there, body and spirit, with no connection to get back with. If that wasn't bad enough, there are cannibalistic tribesmen there supported by powerful shamen and hundreds of spirits.
It seems that one of the big families on the Island had its patriarch, Ernesto captured. He is being held on Blood Alley and we are to rescue him.
I go to the Oak Demon Queen and get us some sleeping potions, in case we have to deal with possessed people or prisoners. We then go by Rimigi so that I can ask Dina for help. I am expecting that maybe she will be able to get some potions for me... but I ask her to come along, because I'm scared about the spirits on the island, and she accepts. Actually she accepts for a whole lot more, and before I know it, I have a woman who wants to go off with me and get hitched. Well, I figure, we'll deal with this after Blood Alley, if she survives.
We also get this shaman affiliated with the Oak Demon Queen to come along. He basically comes along because he hears Frankie has done some great service for the Oak Demon Queen....
So we go to Port Jullar to hire mercenaries, only every time we mention blood alley, they lose interest. We also talk to a scholar -adventurer and get a map with all of the traps marked. Then our scholar agrees to come with us and map the island, for an additional fee. It develops that he is immune to (can't interact with) spirits. This makes him the perfect person to infiltrate the island.
So later on, Amerigo lines up this unit of troops in chainmail, whose captain (I can't remember his name) is quite good... there are 21 of them, which gives us a lot of extra beef. Then, as we are getting ready to leave, this guard captain meets a buddy of his.... the Champion of the Golden Lotus. Now, this guy isn't real bright, but is incredibly brave, to the point of just being plain immune to fear, or so it seems. He actually asks if he can come along... doesn't even ask for payment.
So we sail off to Blood Alley. The place is surrounded by smaller islands, which are really just big rocks jutting out of the sea, and we come in behind on of these to avoid getting seen.
After some disagreement with Amerigo about how close to get to the island, the scholar jumps off the boat and swims out.... a damn long way.... to Blood Alley. We hide the boat behind a rock and wait. Several hours later, he returns... with info on where the hostages are. It's in a big building on the NE corner of the island, sortof away from all of the Hun traps and on a Peninsula.
So, we plan for a long time. We are all nervous and argue over how to proceed. Amerigo wants to use the boat as a diversion while we are on the island, doing a naval attack and burning their boats, then sailing off and luring away a bunch of the pirates. We nix the idea for the obvious reason that it might leave us stranded on Blood Alley.
On the eastern spur of the island, there is a "saddle" in the cliffs where we could cross and attack with minimum chance of losing the element of surprise. We decide to attack there.
Just as we decide on this, our Shaman informs us of a serious problem. There is a spirit ward on the island, and they will be warned the minute we get within a kilometer of it. Without surprise, there is no way our small force will be able to take on the 800 or so canibbalistic pirates who live there.
We try to get the Scholar to go back. He is immune to spirits, and won't be detected by the ward. He refuses. We plead. He is the only one with the spirit immunity... anyone else would be detected by the ward. He is unswayed. Frankie gets upset and brawls with him. We separate them, and I again ask the Scholar to go. We have come too far now to turn back now.. He refuses. Frustrated, I accuse him of cowardice. This tactic fails as well.
We discuss many plans, including giving up and going home. Finally, the Champion announces that he will go and destroy the spirit ward. I row him to the shore and drop him off, then return to the boat. We wait.. the spirit ward goes down, and we go close to shore to rendezvous with the Champion. He is not there. We go to do the attack, hoping he will join up with us.
We take the boat in close and disembark on the south side of the island. We will be entering the building through a hole in the back wall. The building is roughly square, with a central courtyard. There is a main hallway that runs completely around the building, connecting with large open rooms at the corners. There are innumerable side passages.
We split into two groups. The Captain, his men, and the Shaman in one group. In the other, myself, Frankie, Amerigo, -ron's character-, Dina, the Shaman's fetch, and our boys and goons. We get to the main hallway... the Captain and his men go left, we go right. The idea is that we will meet somewhere after having searched the place for the dungeon entrance.
We are immediately attacked by spirits. I and Dina put spirit screen on men who are attacked, but there is little we can do for them. We push on, searching eash side passageway and coursing around, meeting minimal resistance. Finally we hear fighting ahead of us... It is the Captain and his men. We come up behind the pirates they are fighting, flanking them. The battle is over quickly.
The dungeon entrance is in the room. We are very creeped out. The Pirates are cannibals... there are gnawed human bones and remains scattered all over the building. We leave a guard at the entrance... we don't want to get sealed in the dungeon! I go down into the dungeon, with Francesco, Dina, the Shaman, the captain and some men, and some of the boys. The rest stay up to guard our point of egress.
As we go downstairs, the horror of this place becomes manifest. There are ... people... , or what used to be people, nailed to the sides of the passages... they are still alive, in a fashion. Dina says they all have enchantments on them, and we are afraid that they are actually undead. We continue. We enter a human meat locker. Gobbets of meat lie everywhere -- human meat. bone, blood, gore... lines the corridor. An eerie wailing permeates the place... you can't hear it with your ears, but you can't get it out of your mind. There are cells on either side of us, locked. There are ..things, in the cells. They scream, they claw and gnaw for release, for death. It is not obvious at first, but I soon realize that the creatures in the cells were once human. Now they feast on each other, and their minds are long gone with terror, horror and despair.
We see a red light further down the hallway. It is pulsing, and the corridor is damp with flesh and blood. There are things... plantlike tendrils, on the ceiling, but we can't see them well because it is getting dark. Something happens -- either we are affected by spells, or perhaps this unshielded glimpse into the darkest depths of horror is just too much... but several of us, including the Shaman and myself, are frozen, petrified with fear. Dina comes to me and talks me out of it... she is a rock, calm amidst all of this horror. She is the only one unnaffected. The Shaman announces that he is not going any further, and so do some of our men. The rest of us continue.
The light is brighter now. There are spirits around us now, spirits of the mad dead. We are attacked by several of them. Some are beaten off, but Francesco is beaten by an especially large one in spite of the wards put on him by his wife and the best spells that Dina and I can cast. We leave him in the care of some of the boys and continue. There aren't very many of us now.
The glowing is coming from a reddish glowing thing in the center of the room. Dina says not to go near it, and we take her advice. Spirits fly in and out of it... it seems to be a nexus of some kind.
The room here is completely covered with an inch of pulped human remains. The tendrils grow down far here, beefy red plant things feeding on flesh and fear. We continue. It gets darker quickly once we pass the glowing light... I have some torches, and we light them up. Continuing, we come upon another large room. It has many tables, to which are tied many captives. Some of them are possessed by spirits.. all of them are being tortured... there are several priest-pirates down here. We manage to surprise and kill all of them in a fight that is too close for comfort. I find Ernesto. He is alive... that is all that I can tell. We untie him and the others, assembling a group of about 30 of the living dead. Many cannot walk, but we get them all moving, carrying and assisting as necessary.
I am seized by a terrible fear that we will all be sealed up, down here in the belly of the beast, that we will degenerate and become as the ones in the cells... we move as quickly as possible, without leaving anyone behind. If it was necessary to do this, I would kill them myself, out of mercy.
One of the ex-hostages wanders into a side room... it has a big iron machine in it, with swords and spikes and stuff.. the machine has a spirit. I go in to get him, and the world twists and churns...left is up and right is down, and that is all changing anyway, and the machine is moving now and it is eating the prisoner, and I am trying to get away, but when I run away I get closer to the machine... Dina tries to help me... she and the others rescue me from the room but the ex-hostage is impaled on the machine.
We reach the dungeon entrance... our comrades are still there. With all haste we return to the boat, splitting up into two groups and retracing our steps so as to pick up any of our fallen comrades that we can find. There aren't very many.... at the boat, we count heads, and Bruno is missing. Of our 50 or so guys, there are only 4 that are strong enough to fight.. the Shaman scouts for bruno and is able to determine that Bruno didn't make it out of the building... which means that he is basically impossible to rescue now that the pirates are warned and we are so weak.
The Champion doesn't return. We can only surmise that he was killed or possessed after bringing the ward down. The scholar is distressed by this.... Amerigo basically tells him that he is at fault, since he could have done the Champion's job with much less personal risk. The scholar, amazingly, announces that if we will wait for him, he will go ashore and look for the Champion.
We drop him ashore and wait.... later, we see signal fires at the shore.. it is the Champion and the Scholar. The champion is unconscious, the scholar is completely covered in some red fungus... we scrape the stuff off what he touches, but cannot get it off him. We sail off, barely escaping pusuing pirate boats, victorious, but not unchanged.
Epilogue. The champion arranges, at my request, for the Golden Lotus to heal the Scholar. The mercenary captain decides to quit and join the faithful, dedicating himself as a demon fighter. I and Dina share a closer bond now... we have walked through hell now and returned. But I can't forget Bruno, and I wonder at night, is he dead, or worse? I know that I will have to return to Blood Alley someday, with a force sufficient to scour the island and kill everyone on it, if only to find out.
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Copyright © 1997-2002 by Michael Derry, derry@jugenstil.com |
Updated 5 APR 02 |