It is not easy being famous, but a man of my undeniable talent and skill must suffer its burden with grace and dignity. It is not easy, hating the OSR, yet running and reviewing OSR games, but one must persevere in the face of such apparent inconsistencies, indeed, one must embrace them wholeheartedly and without question. So continues the chronicling of dread Carcosa.
When we last set off our heroes were pursued by a horde of animated snake-men statuary. After a harrowing forced march the gang circled around the village of the hated Yellow Men Slavers and took up a position on a nearby hill, seeking to lure the Snakemen into its path. This plan succeeded admirably, as the Snake-Men statues proceeded to break their way through its walled enclosure, causing great vexation among the Yellow Men. As the air resounded with the crack of splintering stone and the wailing of yellow men, our band, spurred on by Kris the Dolm Man, sought to infiltrate the now distracted village and free the dolm handmaiden of He Who Sits on the Polychromatic Butterfly Throne. They also hoped to gain gold, for the throne room was laden with treasures and tribute leveraged from those who feared the might of the foul sorcerer.
With stealth and trickery they proceeded to enact a cunning ambush upon the city’s eastern gate, baptising it with the blood of Yellow Men and securing their escape route. Above the Ziggurat in the centre of the village, unearthly clouds were gathering, prompting our band to split up, leaving mighty Sayd, the cunning Speaker to Animals and the Nameless Blue archer to guard it whilst the rest climbed the stairs. The west gate had since been breached, and the yellow men would soon lose heart against the unstoppable minions of the extinct snakemen. A brief alteraction between our band and the two fanatical temple guardians left to guard the throne room resulted in the death of Kris, whose last act was to pull forth his entrails from the ragged gash in his abdomen and finally taste his own flesh. Disgusted, our band pressed on.
Meanwhile, mighty Sayd, through a combination of trickery, pantomime and impalement, managed to dissuade a party of alarmed yellow men from placing more guards at the east gate. The man left to join his apparently still living comrades was stabbed in the brain shortly and all was well in the east.
Atop the Ziggurat, our heroes were distraught to find that He Who Sits on the Polychromatic Butterfly Throne had emerged from his torpor and was currently in the midst of a hideous conjuration ritual. Surrounded by the bodies of his handmaidens, the venerable sorcerer commanded them to piss off and be spared. They responded with violence, as is only natural when dealing with sorcerers. The Sorcerer was possessed of an unnatural speed and moved as little more then a blur, and soon mighty Rake was struck down, bleeding profusely but still among the living. Small wounds were dealt, and one of the Handmaidens, a fair blue Wench by the name of Jahlin, sought to free herself and the Dolm handmaiden Kris had determined to rescue by joining the fray, pitching a giant bowl of burning oil at the Sorcerer, or more precisely, at the floor somewhere behind the sorcerer. As our heroes narrowly avoided being carved into ribbons a second time Jahlin snuck up on the conjurer and bit his throat out with sharpened fangs, leading to an unexpected victory for our band of merry men.
Overjoyed except for Rake, who was just shy of bleeding out on the floor, our gang filled their felt bags with all the valuables they could carry and so too the Sorcerer’s dagger of strangely worked obsidean, and quickly left the Ziggurat with the two handmaidens, pausing only to pitch a giant stone table off the ziggurat at a pair of inquisitive Temple Guards, breaking them under on sun-baked bricks. Our auxilliaries, under the command of mighty Sayd, struggled with some reinforcements, and this battle too was resolved with only minor injuries on one side and a total rout on the other.
Seeing the unstoppable Snake-men statues finally break through and rout the few remaining Yellow fighting men, our heroes quickly stole a cart and ran from the city, laden with spoils, the Snake-men in slow but inexorable persuit, their nigh-indestructable stone numbers barely diminished by the fight with the Yellow Men. Already deprived of sleep and gripped by exhaustion, our heroes just managed to get the wheelbarrow to the edges of the marshes that had already claimed one of their companions. Pursued by the statues and at the end of their wits, they set out into the quicksands, luring all of the statues into a sunken tomb, there to languish for all eternity.
Injured and exhausted, our band rested for three days before setting out south, to a rumoured fortress of hospitable Jale Men. On their way, they met the Eater of Children, the same creature that had carried off Midros to an early grave. Again it approached them, asking them if they could spare any food. Remus, a man of a thousand whiles, told the creature to approach carefully and then everyone shot it to death with arrows before it could flee.
Our band ended the adventure, unmolested, in the Aerie of the Jale Men, an impregnable fortress and trading post that is kind to visitors but horrendous to slavers and sorcerers. In its honeycombed interior they found succour and healing and the flayed bodies of the hated Ulfire Slavers. As they dined on fungus-wine and red-meat, they spent their hard-earned treasure, endaevouring to set out for the Tsaggasoth Peaks after a short stint to the village of fallen Kris, there to return the Dolm Handmaiden and reap a reward of hitherto uncertain magnitude. Emboldened by their first success, they travelled on to further adventures.
Join us within a week as I transcribe my most recent session of Lost on Carcosa!
Death toll: 9
[A] Rohnan (Specialist 1): Eaten by giant spiders
[B] Jaxxon Windwaker (Ftr 1) : Impaled by Spawn of Shub-Niggurath
[C] Mongo the Red (Sor 1) : Impaled by Spawn of Shub-Niggurath
[B] Klak (Specialist 1) : Skull crushed by Animate Snake-man statue
[B] Kristal (Ftr 1): Drowned in Quicksand
[D] Kakarot (Sor 1): Beheaded by Jale Berserker
[A] Midros (Sor 1): Bissected by Jale chieftain
[E] T’Click (Spec 1): Butchered by treacherous Ulfire men
[B] Kris (Spec 1): Gutted by Elite Yellow Temple Guardian
Age of Dusk 
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