Monster Blood Tattoo RPG: The Eekers' Lament Part IV

The Eekers' Lament

Chapter IV: The Dale

Black Habilist - The darker students of habilistics are the black habilists or morbidists: the necrologists (those who raise corpses to life); the cadavarists (those who make monsters from parts, an illegal discipline called fabercadavery); the therospeusists (who grow monsters from living matter, an illegal art known as therospeusia); or the transmogrifers (surgeons who operate on people to make lahzars, a process known as transmogrification or clysmosurgia). - Foundling

When the ettin fell upon Roman, he used his metal stave to partially shield himself from being crushed by the ettin's massive head.  The rod punctured the skull near the ettin's eye, allowing a cascade of the yellow worms to rain down around him.  Throgmorton quickly ran over, pulling his old hammock from his vinagaroon duffle.  Spreading the hammock out, he managed to capture most of the worms and then flung the squirming mass away from them.

Flossie, demonstrating a strength belying her small stature, seized the dead ettin's head and held it up so that Roman could scramble out from beneath it.

Roman then crawled up to the back of the head.  He began jumping up and down upon it in order to cause his trapped stave to puncture the back of the monster's skull.  In the meantime, Throgmorton hurled one of his last potives under the ettin's head, burning the worms remaining there.  Sister Brandywine noticed that the worms that remained in the field in which the carriage had been hurled were now swarming over the wreckage which contained what was left of their supplies.  

She hastily grabbed a vial of bothersalts from Throgmorton's salumanticum and ran towards the carriage. She hurled it and the potive burst upon the side of the wreck.

Unfortunately, bothersalts were possibly not the best thing for this situation, especially considering the manner it which it landed.  The host of worms fled from the carriage rapidly forming an arc completely surrounding the wrecked carriage.

Surprised by this misadventue, she didn't notice one of the large worms approach.  The thing bit completely through her stout equiteer boots.  As the creature's teeth clamped down on her foot, she could feel a slimy tendril boring its way into her flesh.  Danny quickly threw one of his daggers, cutting the worm in half and Brandywine was able to pull the disgusting thing from her foot.

While this was going on, Roman had stopped and removed the casketoon from his back.  He washed his staves in the antiseptic solution that filled the living backpack.  While he was doing so, the mass of worms that had been in Throgmorton's flung hammock slithered toward the fulgar.  He twisted away from the horrid things, driving them back with a blow from his stave but severely injured his back in the process.

Back by the carriage, Flossie used her saber to clear a path to the carriage.  The Danny, Brandywine, and Throgmorton rushed to retrieve what they could salvage from the wreck while Flossie kept the path open.

Although the large collection of healing potives had been lost, the majority of items in Throgmorton's test barrow survived, which would allow him to replenish his stock of potives.  They also were able to retrieve their spare ammunition, and Danny's jar of whortleberries.  Danny insisted that they take several large pumpkins as well.  These last were his almost exclusive food, his multiple body modifications having ruined his digestive system. 

They rushed toward the perceived safety of the stockade, Brandywine bringing up the rear.  She saw the mass of worms following them.  With no other option, she hurled the pumpkins into their midst.

Surprisingly, it appeared that the worms were highly attracted to the pumpkins and turned their pursuit aside to devour the gourds.

After they entered the stockade, Roman barred the gates, providing them with a respite from the worms. They observed it contained two one-storey huts and a more substantive two-story cottage. The place was quiet.

Throgmorton fell to preparing additional potives to replenish his exhausted stock.  His haste and the damaged contents of his test barrow making the product less than reliable.

Brandywine and Roman approached one of the smaller buildings.  Hearing nothing insider, they entered.

 It proved to be a storage containing a small amount of food supplies but a surprising number of barrells filled with newly mined copper.

Danny and Flossie approached the other small building.  Placing his ear against the door, Danny heard a voice murmuring the words, "Click, Click." He knocked loudly on the door, hoping to draw out whatever was within.  He and Flossie quickly retreated to positions from which they could target the doorway.  Throgmorton, observing this, had at the ready a vial of Frazzard's Powder that would be sure to repel the monsters.

After Danny's knock, they heard voices from within both the smaller cottage and the larger house begin to chant in unison, "Door, door, open, open."  Simultaneously the doors to both buildings were flung open and a half dozen of the walking corpses attempted to charge out of each of the buildings.  Throgmorton hurled his potive and the acrid fumes from it drove the monsters back into their respective houses.  

Brandywine approached the smaller hut and fired the seven barrels of her heptigun into the slavering mass at the door.  The multiple bullets shredded the flesh of all six revermen, dropping them to the floor.

As the other group of revermen seethed at the door of the larger house, Roman shocked the lead who blocked the door.  This action was undone by Danny who simultaneously threw one of his daggers into the head of the frozen corpse. Through the cleared door, the party poured their shots into the remaining walking dead and left them writhing on the floor.

Once all six of the walking corpses had been destroyed, Danny went cautiously up the stairs to the second floor.

Outside, Throgmorton noticed that the dear walkers that had been shredded by Brandywine's heptigun shot were releasing large quantities of worms.  He hastily set fire to the cottage, despite Roman's concern at the hasty act.

In the upper floor, Danny found several shelved stocked with empty specimen bottles, a number of tomes of forbidden knowledge, and ream after ream of scribbled notes cluttering a desk.  On the floor lay a dead body with a large portion of the skull missing and a discharged pistol in its hand, obviously the victim of suicide.  Laying on the floor was a blood-stained journal.  Danny quickly glanced through it.

It proved to be the journal of one Jonthan Plemmsen, surgeon, likely black habilist, and self-murderer.  It seems that Plemmsen had become an outcast due to his dabbling in things that man was not meant to know and found refuge among this poor trusting colony of eekers, whom he described as "simple bumpkins so addicted to compassion for all that they had been cast out of their homes as sedorners."  They had settled in The Dale after hearing of its fertility and rumors that the Pilts had once mined here for copper.

It was this latter occupation that sealed their doom.  Having discovered a strange and vicious worm in their mining efforts, they brought it to Plemmsen to identify. He began experimenting with it and soon discovered it would replicate when feed flesh of some sort as well as increase in size.  His servant, one of the eeker's daughter, a girl named Polly, was accidently bitten by one of the worms.  Rather than seeking to cure her, Plemmsen had observed the effects of the attack.  Polly soon began showing signs of madness, repeating phrases over and over again.  After 3 days she died.  Plemmsen dug up her body at night and performed an autopsy upon it.  He found her brain mostly consumed by a mass of the worms, their oversized jaws making a horrible clicking sound as they fed.  He noticed a certain uniformity of action among the worms as well as an ability to animate the poor girl's corpse in simple ways.

Believing that the worms might be used to gain control over people, turning them into automatons, the next night, he introduced them into the huts of the sleeping eekers.  The next day, all began showing the same symptoms as Polly.  Although he feigned treating the eekers, he really continued his experiments but now on a larger scale.  However, after all of the eekers had died, they reanimated and showed intentional uniform actions, as if directed by some other power.  They began to pursue Plemmsen who sought refuge here in his room.  As they approached, he chose to kill himself rather than suffer the extended horror he had inflicted upon the eekers.

At this point, Danny began to notice the smell of burning thatch.  The fire Throgmorton had set by now spread to the two-storey building.  Danny pocketed the journal and hastily retreated.

Danny rejoined the party and they loaded their supplies onto a hand cart.  Leaving now burning stockade, they killed the pumpkin-gorged worms lying in the road.  Danny told them of his discovery and related the contents of Plemmsen's journal.  They realized that the intelligence which seemed to direct the walking corpses might be the creature the Pilts had called the Ravenusa and that it might be found in the copper mine that the eekers had found.  They retreated from the ravaged Dale to the safety of the woods for rest, intending on the morrow to confront the dread Ravenusa.