MONOLITHS & COAT HANGERS
- Maria Tamandua -
Those attending were: Sir Arthur J. Portguzzler (skunk torturer / poet); Magnum Thunderer (proffesional big person); Maria Tamandua ('world famous' acrobat anteater); Fulto Brim (big and fat); Ali MacPherson (drunk again); Dreg (the disgusting one); Bjork (Karnosite polar bear); Mett-Aa (needs his head examining); Rogerick (a rhino); Kaane (one-armed kodiak bear); Peegee (a chimp in a leather bikini); and Snuurg ('nuff said)....
ZING! We were all standing around in a big circle of scorched grass in a jungle. These things tend to happen when you're one (or in this case, several) of the Created. Well, what bizarre mission were they going to ask us to do this time? Fortunately, a glowing green dryad was provided to answer just this question.
Now, as you all know, the world is in imminent danger of self-destruction. You did know that, didn't you? Well, it is, take my word for it: listen, I'll explain - there's been a few monoliths popping up lately which are warping the space-time continuum and kicking out vast amounts of weird magikal effects and suchlike. Nine of these things exist, and so far seven have materialised - one for each Demon Lord that has been released on the world. The list so far (of Demon Lords, I don't know the names of the monoliths) consists of: Pravex the Pervert (who was let out by Snuurg ages and ages ago), Lurgrot Lord of Fear (who was let out by some PCs who weren't at the OTT and so shall remain nameless), Kotor, Anthuss, Hathu (another PC responsible for that one, I'm afraid), Kyluss and, most recently, Naffar the Lord of Untruth. Which only leaves two (Vaxane Mistress of Bondage and Torture, and Dauth, who's the boss); when these two wake up, and their respective monoliths appear, an unstoppable cycle begins, which will end up with the destruction of the world. Regardless of anything anybody does to try and stop it.
The good news: all nine monoliths are needed to do this, and they're completely irreplaceable. Destroy even one (before the ninth appears of course) and the world is saved - although I dare say the other monoliths could still make a nuisance of themselves.
The bad news: nobody has ever been able to even scratch one of the damn things, despite many attempts to do so.
The other good news: the dryad knew of a plant which could destroy the monolith, apparently called Creation Live Weed , and the most powerful healing herb in the universe.
The other bad news: it only grows in the centre of giant insect hives. Which explains why it isn't available in every corner-shop, I suppose.
At this point, the dryad offered to give us any equipment we wanted to carry out our task - but nothing technological: machine guns and that sort of thing were all introduced by the Melts, and were to a large extent responsible for this business with the monoliths in the first place. Ali tried to hide his gun behind his back, but it didn't work very well as it was almost as big as him. Sir Arthur wanted a gardening book (it didn't mention the Creation Weed, unfortunately), and Dreg wanted a wicker wheely-basket (don't ask me). Fulto wanted a naked dancing girl, but he didn't get one.
Then we were all teleported into a city. There weren't any insect hives there. I don't know why we couldn't have gone to one straight away, but there you are. A sign outside read:
WELCOME TO SUNNY VOSARN
Population: Declining
Yup, as you may already know, Vosarn is being ravaged by a horrible plague at the minute: people getting itchy armpits, coming out in green spots and dissolving into puddles of slimy goo, that sort of thing.
Oh, apparently, drinking, smoking and general hard living are a protection against this plague. So Ali at least would be safe.
We were joined at this point by Skint Eastwood, a weasel in a hat and poncho, squinting and smoking a cigarette. He claimed to be a reporter for something called 'Nightmares In A Damaged Brain' , and for some reason thought it might be a good idea to latch onto us.
Anyway, there was a botanist on the other side of town, so Fulto, Ali, and I decided to go and pay him a visit: he obviously wasn't going to have any Creation Weed, but he might at least know how to preserve the stuff once it was out of the ground. The others decided to head for the nearest pub. As they went we saw people running away from them and hiding. I can't imagine why. It's not as if we were in any way frightening.
Well, unless you count the fact that Snuurg was with us, and waving his eight foot Soulsword about...
It turned out that most of the herbalist's stock was nearly dead (as, indeed, was the herbalist) - except, apparently, for some mobile cacti that were annoying the chickens. He did have something called 'Out Of Your Head Blueweed' which Ali seemed happy to buy. The herbalist also knew - fortunately - how to preserve Creation Weed: you put it in extra strong magikal fertiliser; rather less fortunately, the only fertiliser that strong comes from somewhere called Sockland, on the far side of the world. So it was going to be a bit tricky getting there.
Ali suggested that we give the dryad the Blueweed, and pretend it was Creation Weed. As I pointed out though, there was one tiny little flaw with that plan, which was that the world would be destroyed if it worked. This didn't seem to bother Ali too much - at least nobody could come after you to complain, he explained. We outvoted him anyway.
So, off we trotted to meet up with the others at the pub. When we got there, Ali offered to buy everyone a drink.
No, seriously. That's what happened. I couldn't believe it myself. But I had a drink, anyway.
Fulto tried to chat up the barmaid, a seven foot tall lioness with enormous muscles, by plopping his stomach on the bar and balancing a pint glass on it. Oddly enough, this didn't impress her all that much.
At this point, a group of large leopard guards came into the pub and walked over to us, waving their guns around.
"Alright," said their captain, "who's been trying to set up a tab by waving a gun at the landlord ?"
"It was Ali!" shouted everyone in unison, as the light began to dawn: Ali of course was nowhere to be seen, having already had the sense to leave at high speed. Skint told the guards that Ali was indeed our friend - but not his - and that it was all our fault.
"Why did you say that you stupid weasel?" complained Fulto.
"It's my duty to always tell the people the truth."
"So you're not a reporter, then?" I asked.
The guards asked to see our identity papers: of course, we didn't have any. "My Mum sat on them," explained Fulto: "Just after she went 'gloop' - from the plague - so I wasn't going to pick them up after that. Anyway they would have gone soggy."
"Well, what about this bloke over here?" asked the guards, "He's disguised as Snuurg. Which is causing a severe disturbance of the peace If you ask me."
Snuurg chopped him in half with his Soulsword. The other guards looked down at the remains of their boss. "Oh, sorry, our mistake. You really are Snuurg. Um, goodbye." Then they left at high speed.
Then Fulto scored with all the females in the pub, and gave them all the best time of their lives.
Funny, I don't remember writing that - doesn't seem to be my handwriting, either. Hmm.
Anyway, for reasons I couldn't quite follow (actually, I think he's probably just demented) Fulto then decided to pick a fight with an enormous cougar covered in tattoos, wearing a mohawk haircut and carrying an impressive collection of lethal implements: Fulto launched a flying tackle at the cougar from a nearby table - it was actually quite impressive - he only missed by about six feet. He landed on a table being used by a group of ocelots and a big leopard to play dominoes. The leopard beat up Fulto and threw him out in the gutter.
After all this mucking about, Ali, Magnum and I joined Fulto in trying to find a way out of the city: it didn't have any insects in it, though it did have a plague - so basically, we didn't want to stay there.
The city walls were about fifty feet high. I thought this was no problem. "We could tie a rope from one of the nearby buildings to the wall, and then we could all tightrope walk across and get out that way."
Fulto didn't seem to like this idea for some reason. The city gates were all boarded up. This was presumably to keep all the plague sufferers in and stop them infecting the countryside. Ali blew a massive hole in the gates with his gun: strangely enough, the guards didn't argue about that.
In the meanwhile we had managed to find out that the only way to get to the nearest insect hive was by landcruiser: these are big sailing-ship-type things on wheels that don't stop for anything. The others managed to catch up with us while we were waiting for the landcruiser to arrive. Kaane was the last to join us, and had a big grin on his face. He wouldn't say why. Perhaps that's just as well.
Much later we heard the sound of a distant thunder-like rumble. "Oh, sorry," said Fulto. A short while after this, we heard the landcruiser approaching. Now all we had to do was jump on board: for myself this presented no problem; I just vaulted on board using Rogerick's pole-arm. The others had a bit more difficulty, but they all managed it; Magnum was almost run over by one of the wheels, but got on board on the second attempt; Arthur had to use magik to reach the deck; Ali didn't even bother doing anything - he just stood beside the ruts with his thumb out. The landcruiser put the brakes on, and came to a stop about a mile later. Ali got on board. Smartass.
It took two days for the landcruiser to reach the fenlands near the insect hive. During this time, Kaane offered to have a sparring rnatch with Peegee. He let her win deliberately. And then he did it again a few more times.
Dismounting from the landcruiser once we had arrived was much less of a problem than getting on. From there we began to trek across the fenlands - after Dreg had stopped rolling about in the mud, anyway. We decided to let Fulto lead the way, though he wasn't all that keen to do so. Dreg managed to find some insect tracks (he does have some uses), so we followed those.
After a few hours, we left the fenlands and came to a rocky region. Fulto decided he'd had enough of leading the party, so he sneaked off behind everyone else: unfortunately, everyone was still following him, and we went round in a big circle for a while. Once we'd got sorted out again, Ali decided to ride on Snuurg's shoulders. For some reason, Snuurg didn't complain about this. We let Mett-Aa scout ahead to see what he could find.
What he found was an enormous insect hive, that someone commented looked like a giant walnut whip. Only someone had nicked the walnut, which was a bit disappointing. Before we could reach the hive though, a couple of insects jumped out at us (for those who haven't met any yet, Wyrdworld insects are about six feet tall, and covered in thick chitinous armour). Mett-Aa waved at the insects to say hello - but then he's demented: in any case, the insects just ignored him; Arthur ran away to hide, which may have been a fairly sensible move, considering; Snuurg grabbed hold of Ali's feet and started using him as a club. When this didn't prove very useful, Snuurg threw him at the nearest insect instead: incredibly, he actually missed. This was probably something of a new experience for Snuurg, but Ali didn't seem to object much as he hurtled off into the somewhat safer distance.
Before we could finish with the two insects, they were joined by two other creatures, one a Melt with a wired-up head and the other a giant insect with two ratkling-cannons bolted to its shoulders. Magnum finished off one of the small insects, and Fulto and I dealt with the other. The giant insects then let rip with the cannons, spraying Magnum and Snuurg with high-calibre bullets. Magnum collapsed unconscious, but Snuurg - in spite of a gaping hole through his chest and stomach - remained almost unaffected. The giant insect didn't last very long after that.
Fulto claimed to see another insect in the distance, and went off to fight it. Unfortunately, there was nothing there. Meanwhile, Dreg tried to sneak up behind the Melt and stab it in the back, but he tripped over and stabbed it in the feet instead. It didn't seem very worried. Bjork and Rogerick then attacked it more conventionally. I managed to hurt the Melt further with a throwing knife, but it was Dreg who finally killed it.
Fulto healed Magnum: Snuurg had somehow fully recovered in the meanwhile; Rogerick tried to skin the giant insect to use its armour. Mett-Aa asked Fulto if he had any potions for boosting strength - he didn't - apparently he had run out of Met-Aa Magik, which was a pity, because that can do almost anything - according to Mett-Aa, anyway.
And so we sneaked into the hive. It appeared to be completely quiet, with no insects of any kind visible. Ali decided to light up a cigarette, which may have been a mistake, because the hive turned out to be inflammable, and Fulto had to put the fire out when Ali dropped the match. Even when we reached the centre of the hive, there still weren't any insects. But there was a concealed trapdoor: underneath this was a long helical chute leading downwards. Mett-Aa decided to stay up top, while everyone else slid down the chute.
At the bottom were a number of passages, from two of which a weird blueish light was being emitted. We all split up at this point, with Fulto and Bjork going down one of the dark corridors, Ali and Arthur staying behind to wait for us, and everyone else dividing between the two illuminated ones. Both of them turned out to end in the same place: the brood chamber.
This was mostly occupied by a giant queen insect, busy laying eggs. A number of docile workers assisted her, carrying the eggs off to other chambers. There was, however, no sign of any flowers. We decided that we would try to sneak up on the insects quietly, and try and find some of the weed. It was at exactly this moment that a loud scream and a horrendous smell emanated from behind us. The workers began to scuttle from the room, and a group of giant warrior insects with guns charged in, as the queen drew herself up towards the roof on silk cords attached to her swollen body. Beneath where she had lain was a pit full of revolting slime - and yes, you've guessed it - Creation Weed.
Before we could back out of the room, Ali and Arthur dashed in behind us, pursued by two more giant insect warriors. Arthur dived straight into the pit (he, of course, had been the one responsible for the smell). Magnum quickly followed him and they began picking the flowers.
Dreg dashed out of a nearby corridor, wearing a scooped-out beetle head and shouting at the insects. This didn't seem to fool them for long.
By this time, half of us were in the pit scrabbling for the Creation Weed and the other half were just learning that insects have acid for blood, which didn't do their swords a lot of good. Peegee and I decided to use unarmed combat instead - although I fell over when I tried to do it, which was a bit embarrassing. The acid didn't seem to affect Snuurg or his Soulsword too much, of course.
Arthur amazingly managed to get one of the insects, although only by using magik. To be precise, the spell was:
Bogs and ballistas,
Flowers and powers,
Insects get legless,
And fall on their headses.
Hmm. Well, it worked. Snuurg killed all five of the other giant insects, by the way. Typical.
By the end of all this excitement, Magnum and Kaane were unconscious, and Snuurg had set himself on fire: this was apparently a deliberate move, and it didn't seem to bother him much. Ali teleported out - or at any rate, he tried to - but magik is always a dodgy customer: what actually happened was that he materialised hovering about a mile above the hive; then he realised that his body was about six feet below him. Without a levitate spell.
Dreg ran off to the find Fulto and Bjork. While we had been battling away in the important place, these two had been having another scrap with a few insects and had only just managed to escape from being glued into the wall. When Dreg turned up, still wearing the beetle-head, there was initially some confusion as Fulto thought that it was an insect that had cut its body off and stuck Dreg underneath it's head to confuse us. But it was soon cleared up.
Ali had dealt with his small problem by this stage, and had also got back inside his body. The rest of us managed to escape before the hive went up in smoke, thanks to Snuurg walking around the place while being on fire.
Our only problem now was that the plant was wilting, since of course we didn't have the wonder-fertiliser that we needed. A number of alternatives were suggested, such as standing Dreg near it, putting it in Ali's friskey bottle, etc. - apparently the plant only grows underneath giant insect queens, and we hadn't brought her with, us. Huh!
Now all we had to do was get back to the jungle. Fulto was willing to teleport us there but only if he first re-charged his magikal energy. Apparently this would involve the assistance of a suitably nubile young female. Since I certainly wasn't going to comply, that only left Peegee, who seemed more than happy to assist.
Slapper.
PING! So, there we were back at the dryad. Had our mission finished? Certainly not: having found the Weed we now had to use it against a monolith; to use it, all we had to do was enter the thing, and stick the herb right it in its centre, known as the Heart of Chaos; then the monolith would self-destruct. We hoped.
The dryad teleported us all to the nearest monolith after restoring our weapons and healing us up, etc. Kaane dived straight into the monolith, but the rest of us were a little more cautious before walking into it - probably a good thing, because we never saw Kaane again.
Inside the monolith everything was red: red sky, red grass, black lightning. Well, alright then, not everything was red. Almost everything, OK? Anyway, we all looked fairly normal, apart from a silvery astral cord thingy stretching away from our backs. Snuurg didn't have one of these, which is probably very significant, but I'm not sure what of.
Sitting near the entrance was a large skeleton in black robes, carrying a scythe.
"Hey up, Death" said Ali.
" Oh hello, Ali" replied the Grim Reaper, " I was just listening to Blue Oyster Cult."
"Do you know where the Heart of Chaos is?"
"Just over there to your left."
So off we went. We didn't find the Heart of Chaos: well, not immediately anyway; what we did find was a field of enormous peas. Dreg listened to the pea-pods, but they didn't seem to do anything much, so he stole one of the peas.
A bit further on was a village. All the people hid from us and peeked out from behind their curtains. Arthur went over to one of the windows, and peeked back. After the person inside had recovered from the shock, he answered the door. He revealed that the village was part of Limbo, to which it had been sent for partaking of too much Out Of Your Head Blueweed. They were terrorised by a jolly green giant who owned the pea-field and challenged everyone who took a pee - sorry - took a pea to a duel to the death. Everyone looked at Dreg.
Sure enough, the giant soon arrived. Dreg offered to put the pea back again, but the giant wasn't having any of that. He had to fight the giant and that was that.
Dreg suggested a weight-lifting contest. He bet the giant that he could lift something with one hand that the giant couldn't lift with two. The giant accepted. Dreg picked up some water in one hand, put it onto the floor and left it for the giant to pick up. The giant looked at the puddle. Then he looked at Dreg. Then he looked at the puddle again.
"That's cheating!" he cried, "I'm going to have to kill you now," and so saying, he whipped out an enormous sword. Mett-Aa hurled a magik growing rod at the giant, which certainly hurt him quite a bit. Before the giant could do anything else, Rogerick sneaked up behind him and hamstrung him. The giant collapsed to the ground and started crying.
Arthur offered to torture the giant with poetry to make it tell us where the Heart of Chaos was. This didn't work. Somebody else suggested saying 'Please', but this was widely considered to be too extreme. Fortunately, the villagers told us that you could reach anywhere from Limbo just by thinking about it. We decided to pay a visit to Sockland, wherever that was, to get hold of some magik fertiliser.
PING! - again: there we were in Sockland, which was even weirder than inside the Monolith: everything was in checkerboard colours, even the soil; pencil stubs flew about on wings; coat hangers leapt about like demented kangaroos; and small staples scurried across the ground.
By interviewing a passing coat hanger, we discovered that Sockland's only trade item was mouldy socks, which just so happened to be a brilliant fertiliser. Off we dashed to the nearest sock graveyard, where we discovered small digital watches picking at the scraps. In return for being allowed to take the socks with us, Ali offered the coat hanger his shirt. The coat hanger was very excited by this, and agreed to let us have as many socks as we wanted.
With the herb safely inside the socks, we went to the Heart of Chaos. This turned out to be a big bubbling black pool about seventy feet across. There was also a small green giant standing by the pool, apparently the son of the one we had just hamstrung. Rogerick pointed to Snuurg and told the kid that this was who had killed it's daddy. The young giant lasted all of three seconds.
It was at this point that Fulto and Mett-Aa decided to change their plan about trying to push Snuurg into the pool, all things considered. Snuurg, meanwhile, took guard of the pool, obviously intent now on stopping us doing what we'd come here for.
It was all or nothing now. Snuurg was determined not to allow any of the Creation Weed into the Heart, and we were just as determined to do just that: Arthur ran for the pool with some of the weed in Dreg's wheely basket. Snuurg shot him. Then several things happened at once:
Snuurg's gun jammed, and Arthur pushed the basket into the pool; Fulto teleported some more Weed into the centre; Ali whirled one of the socks about his head, and threw that in, complete with Weed; the rest of us teleported out of the monolith and ran like hell. After a short pause, there was a tremendous explosion behind us followed by weird lights and the smell of singed fur. Then there was silence: the monolith had gone, as had most of the surrounding scenery.
And so we went back to the dryad, our mission accomplished. The only thing we had lost was Kaane, which no-one seemed terribly worried about. Except, presumably, Kaane - and we weren't able to ask his opinion. The dryad thanked us, gave us a few rewards, and teleported us back to wherever we had come from.
Magnum Thunderer looked down to check: they were still there; well, that was a big improvement - nobody had mucked about with his body this time. Good.
He confidently strode into the distance, revealing the words "I'M A WANKER" painted across his back.