Monday 12 April 2021

The Black City

Characters in the Last Session:

Naida: A  Deft Yellowlander Climate Refugee and Scope (member of the Legion of the Far Sight). The Legion is a semi-secret society that tries to fight crime on the roads of the Grasslands and around the Circular Sea. Bone grenade aficionada. She is accompanied by Ajax, a grumpy exiled Cat Lord with a serpent tail and Otis, the animatronic bear. 

Saffron, a Wise Black Gold Industrialist Machine Human whose personality was uploaded to a cybernetic prairie dog after being killed by Johnny-7's auto immune system. Outfitted with positronic double brain, extendable limbs and laser eyes. Accompanied by a furry animate kite. Seeking a prosthetic body for mother.

Kozue: An Wise Elven Moon Mountain Witch, a soothsayer from the Sister of the Near Moon. Her singing spirit (appearing as a wingless, serpentine creature to those who can see it) in a pink bottle aids her in her auguries. She has dreams of the world ending and seeks hidden messages about the looming apocalypse.

Azure Dee: A Blue God Cultist on her journey to the Black City where she is supposed to bring the apocalypse by sacrificing Vile organs. The Vile are a species of (demonic?) rulers from the Long Long Ago. She is accompanied by Cataract, a Wire-and-bone biomechanical salamander. She has undergone mutation after being exposed to a vome infection that made her muscles grow uncontrollably. The mutation has slowed down after a week of therapy sessions in the solarium of the Pylon Kraal.

Hamish Mac Rainbow: A Redland District Folk Hero with a black motorbike and rainbow-colored beard. Wielder of the Fractal Blade. Slayer of  a maddened Ka-Elemental. His heroic reputation vastly exceeds his actual deeds but he's working on living up to the legend.

N’Keth: A Strong Volkan Diesel Dwarf, bat eared, hyena snouted and with furry skin, who is tracking a Vile intruder from the Void. Armed with a fierce Warhammer and protected by his Holy Symbol, an unageing plastic spork.

Kozue and Azure traverse the ash dunes on the stolen motorbike. Sama warns Kozue of the spatial-temporal dangers of the Pre-City and the Moon Witch builds a simple construction from her tripod to indicate distortions in the landscape to Azure. When they pass the brutalist-fungus building of the Dark Hospital Kozue senses the presence of Soba, who wishes her luck.

Naida shakes Hamish out of his drug induced delirium and explains the urgency of the situation but Hamish had already partially been informed by the Secretary and is ready to save the world. They grab N’Keth and the reluctant Saffron (who convinces them to first visit the Dark hospital in order to bring Vicar's body to mother) and pursue the witches in the Redlander Autowagon with Amberto in the turret protected by the ill-fitting diving suit from the Lurid Pines. Naida spots the space-time anomalies through the monocle that N’Keth made for her from the hard light that was lodged in her eye and is able to evade them. They arrive at a moltenstone plaza surrounded by hollowed out sculptures and enter the endless dusty corridors of the Dark Hospital.

Azure and Kozue are hit by the toxic dust of the Pre-City and feel jolts of pain running through their bodies. Azure spots automatons in leather and lead armor who seem to extract something from the grotesquely contorted bodies of dried up travelers with silvery rods. Azure engages with a rather big one, manages to prevail and continues her journey with a new armor ... but when she touches the rod she is overwhelmed by painful memories.

In the hospital old wooden tv-sets hanging under the ceiling show the heroes on black and white vertically shifting screens, a boiler clicks and gurgles, they hear the monotone beeping of a life support machine. Saffron follows the sound of a ringing telephone while the rest fights off waves of plastic faced nuns with blades and syringes. When Saffron picks up the phone they hear for the first time in a long while their mother’s voice, and although she is confused and unable to remember anything she indicates to Saffron her location. They venture deeper into the building passing racks of synthetic limbs and an auto surgery with the replacement body Soba inhabited for a while lying disemboweled in one corner.

The witches arrive at the Black City: And then, in all that structured desolation, that tiered advancement of fractured chaos, was revealed a city beyond the skills and fashioning of any portion of humanity they had ever encountered; a city on a scale that beggared belief; a city of twisted obsidian blades, outrageously curved, bizarrely patterned structures of indecipherable purpose and huge, sweeping vistas leading to canyons and strata and ranks of glistening, glittering edifices, one after another after another. And then they blink and they see before them an elegant city of glassy black towers, elegant promenades, parks and lakes of molten mercury. In the parks they find statues that mock the Blue God and on the walls of buildings the faces of the comrades they are about to betray. But Sama Zivani, the Eater of Dreams spurs them on and leads them through the Black City to a grassy cliff-top with a small black pyramid and a withered altar.

Saffron lowers Vicar’s body gently into a dentist chair surrounded by wired instruments and begins singing with the sweet voice of a 56k modem, modulating and weaving together mother’s time-fractured mind. Outside in the corridor N’Keth holds off the Soba-possessed body of the Quarter-Ling Avatar while Hamish and Naida blow up an army of Dark Hospitallers. Finally Saffron collapses into mother’s lap and she cradles her gently. Later she leads them to an underground metro station that transport them to the Black City.

At the cliff-top spirits in the form of pale mice-deer graze peacefully. Azure performs the ritual placing the vile organs around the pyramid while Kozue constructs a protective structure from the poles of her tripod refusing to aid Azure in her preparations. When the heroes emerge from the Black City they are too late: A blue glow spills out of the five vile parts while at the same time a blue storm escapes the five portals around the Black City. A mass of mouths and eyes and tentacles arises from the oily sea. Naida finds an elevated position to take aim at the Blue God while Hamish and Amberto draw their weapons and jump towards the apocalyptic entity. Mother in Vicar’s body evokes source code that detaches the Black City from their reality. When Azure realizes that she had failed the Blue God she enters the Black City and blows herself up in an eruption of blue light.

N’Keth partially paralyzed from toxins injected by the plastic faced nuns takes out his pipe and - invited by Kozue - sits down next to her, smoking and watching quietly. Far above, inexplicitly, the Near Moon smiles over them.

 Actual Play: https://youtu.be/CnWgsy70yic

 

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