Vignettes of Shedu
<ahem>
3rd Galaxy
You and your merry band of murdering compadres had finally tracked down the last remaining members of the rival gang in your territory, and chased them onto an old slum shipyard. The final battle was pitched and intense, leaving only you as a survivor. You were badly wounded and woozy when you heard the police arriving to surround the the shipyard, and you hid in a massive old barge container filled with food animals. Convenient for avoiding capture and punishment by the police, the container was lifted and loaded onto a barge and began an interstellar voyage by tug. Somewhat less convenient was the fact that you had no means to escape or alter the semi-sentient robotic barge...
That was 7 months ago. (Actually, it was 2D6 months ago, in an intended ploy to let your character earn some helpful stage of scientist during the voyage, but this became moot with intelligence of 1. No biggie.) Now, finally, you can feel through the imperfect dampening systems that the container has been dislodged from the barge proper, and is in transit through atmosphere.
During your stay, you could have eaten the livestock or their feed. Though not the brightest lizard on the log, you did have sufficient willpower to resist eating the livestock and subsist entirely on their bland critter-chow, should you choose to. Do you? Do you attempt to make any preparations?
Hmmm... I would think that periodically I would fire up the communicator / computer to see if I can connect to any kind of information web within its tiny 1 km range. 7 months? Probably feeling a little stir crazy by now. Realizing that the owners of the barge may be quite pissed at me for eating some of their livestock, I’ll limit myself to the critter-chow.
When I feel the transit through atmosphere, I fire up the communicator and see if I can connect to any information web and figure out where the heck I am. Describe the livestock... are there any large black herbivore’s that I may be able to hide on?
You fire up your comm but still get no useful data signal. Any planet that doesn't have data signal long before you reach the atmosphere is officially a backwater.
The livestock are in two distinct varieties: tiny 2kg cow-like mammals, and large 600kg chicken-like birds. There are some darker specimens of the giant chickens, however they do not appear to have a temperament conducive to permitting you to hide on them. Do you try anyway? Or do you find an alternate hiding spot inside the container vessel? Or perhaps do you give up on hiding and intend to rely on charisma? You are "cool", after all.
I think I’ll find an alternate hiding spot inside the vessel. I’d like to be in a position where I can get to the center of a group of the birds quickly, so if they start getting herded out, I can sneak along amongst them. I’ll try the hiding/sneaking first, and if that fails, try to talk my way out of the situation.
The transit through the atmosphere takes several minutes, giving you ample time to perfect your hiding spot amongst the crude life-support and critter-tending machinery inside the container. Additionally, the critters are making considerable ruckus, which should make almost any still and quiet entity hard to notice. When the container finally comes to a rest, there is a brief pause, then creaking and whirring of the main door unlocking - finally! It rumbles open, and a group of grubby beings start conveying the animals outside into THE LIGHT! The painfully bright light! They sling a mini-cow under each arm or hook a lead to a mega-chicken to take them out of the container. They work busily, and seem sufficiently focussed on their task that it's possible that you could have just stood in the corner and not necessarily been noticed.
However, sneaking out unnoticed at this point would be extremely difficult. The door is almost always admitting somebody or something such that passing through it guarantees you being clearly in someone's line of sight, if not actually in their way.
How many grubby looking beings?
There are 6, varying somewhat in size and shape without an obvious single species, but they are all between 80 and 200 kg and humanoid bipeds. They have no apparent gear whatsoever, besides some threadbare and often-patched tunics.
Well, I don’t want to take the chance that they will close me up in here again, so I pick up a couple of the cow like mammals and as someone is leaving I step in behind them and follow them out.
Ah, bold audacity! This is going to require dice rolling, so we'll discover what happens after I get home in a couple hours.
So while we’re enjoying drinks in that bar, I ask Hynie and the rest if they’ve ever had aspirations of taking over the planet and setting themselves up as petty dictators.
Hymie and the gang all raise their eyebrows and ask how that might be done. The planet already has a fair share of petty warlords, and they don't generally manage to maintain dominion over much. There's just not enough communication or travel to maintain anything other than local governments - and even those are generally tenuous.
While Hymie expounds on various excuses, you also get the feeling that there's more to it that they're just not talking about. The feeling is that it's something dark, and unlikely to come up in conversation readily.
I ignore the impression that there is something else dark, but try to keep them talking to gain any more insight.
“Not sure how it would be done... <grinning>this will be my first global conquest</grinning>. I was just thinking that we have some potential ingredients for a campaign. One, the citizens of this world seem to live in relative poverty – I mean, not having access to a ready supply of patches just blows me away. We could convince people that under one rule (namely ours) we could organize convoys that would bring supplies to this world. Two, those beasties... obviously people are hunting them either to claim them as trophies or guard pets. If we could prevent the random hunters from coming, but just allow the people that pay us, that could be a steady source of income... and well, something about those beasties has me wondering if they might be a force in of itself that we could potentially use. Also, from what I’ve seen, a lot of the citizens live in constant fear from well, everyone. Organizing them into one rule could allow an illusion of security that we could exploit.”
“The fact that you four exist as seasoned combatants on a backwater world indicates that we could have a supply of soldiers to win over, if we could figure out a way to convince them to join our cause.”
Hymie knits his sizeable brow. "You sure talk big for a whelp that didn't look like he would survive the walk between holdings. One, skipping over the convoy you'd have to pull out of your ass, how would you realistically start a flow of medical patches to a population that can't pay for them? Two, how in the zark would you be able to prevent random hunters visiting the moon? You stopped counting, but let's say that three is the idea of turning the Demon-Wolves into a 'force' - let's just not go there. The people who even use them for guard animals are fools."
The group shares a moment of Not Saying Anything, and continues drinking. Hymie continues picking on your ideas.
"As for organizing anybody, well, that would be pretty much impossible. The people on this moon are extremely individualistic, either by birth in this harsh setting or by being willing to venture here. Add to the mix that they don't have much communication or socialization, and you're pretty much out of options. Even if you brought a carrier into orbit with a fleet of fighters, you still wouldn't be able to even reach much more than a tiny minority to explain the tactical situation, and even those people might not really believe or care."
"I'm afraid that you might be overestimating our group prowess, our little group I mean. But even so, there aren't many on this moon that can face us without advantage of numbers. We hardly represent some untapped resource. Besides which, we wouldn't be likely to join anybody else - joining is too much like letting down your guard. We just happen to have a couple open positions for Junior Goons, seeing as how our last ones got eaten."
It's about this point that you notice the Chorkish Medic Babe is no longer at the table with the rest of you. The others evidently notice and are unalarmed, as they order a new flagon of mead for her and have it put on the table in front of her empty chair.
“Yeah, the last group I was with got annoyed with my grandiose plans too... But, assuming we could get patches here, we wouldn’t sell them to the populous, we would organize a fighting force led by us and they would be the ones with the patches. Anyone who wanted the security of having patches would have to join up. In return, they would become a standing army who had two goals – securing any territory we want, and eliminating any hunters that come down. Obviously to start with we’d only have a bit of territory, but as our numbers grew we could expand. Any hunters we took out would be looted for their supplies and ships, which would further increase our power.” At this point I’m sure I’m sputtering a bit and have a crazed look in my eye.
I take a long sip from whatever frothy concoction I’m drinking to calm down a bit.
“Why are those that use the Demon-Wolves for guard animals fools?”
I check to make sure I still have the med-kit and patches.
“And don’t get me wrong guys... I’m perfectly happy being a junior goon. Just making conversation.”
That you still have all your stuff is verified with a quick series of pats and peeks.
Gilbert wraps a long-fingered hand around his crude, handmade clay cup and mutters behind it before taking a gulp, "...and they call us snipers twitchy."
Meanwhile, Franz looks up from his bowl and his the beady little eyes twinkle with an air of pondering on his big, lumpy head. "Say, isn't there that mountain near here that some whack-job claims as his exclusive territory, murdering anyone that wanders in and doesn't get caught in one of his nasty little booby traps?"
Hymie nods. "Yeah. What was his name again?"
"Something stupid, wasn't it?"
"Epileptor, Flailer of Limbs, or something like that." Hymie makes arm-waving motions to go along with his description.
"No, I thought it was Gozer the Gozerian, and he threatened to sic his slow-moving fiery Slorg on us after he impaled that Junior Goon as a warning." Franz does a passing imitation of the Giant Staypuft Marshmallow Man face.
"Maybe it was Eel Heaper, Fisher of Marshy Bottoms?"
Gilbert slams his cup down on the table and shoots an irritated glance at both Hymie and Franz. "His name was Ylyxypr, Flayer of Minds, and he made that Red Shirt impale himself on a zarking stump. And it's not zarking funny to be joking about shit like that. That Red Shirt was a nice guy, and if we hadn't run like a pack of Gilths out of a Sludge Mutt conference, I probably would have burned holes in each of your tiny little brains."
Hymie and Franz are quiet for a moment, then Franz slowly leans over and mock-whispers to you. "Don't worry. He'll like you too, if you die." Causing Hymie to squirt mead out his nostrils.
After wiping up, Hymie addresses you again. "Anyway, the point is that there's still plenty of forest on this moon, and it's pretty easy to find a chunk without anybody else in it. Territory doesn't mean squat here, because the holdings are just little tiny motes hidden in the wild anyway."
No further response about the Demon-Wolves is proffered.
"Check, avoid the Flayer of Minds. If anyone sees me about to impale myself on a stump, please stop me. Or at least make a good meal out of my corpse afterwards." I order another mug of mead, probably acquiring quite a taste for it by now.
So, when should our AIF night be this week?
Franz snorts. "Ha! If we see you attempting to impale yourself on a stump, you can be fairly certain that we'll be taking that as a cue to RUN AWAY."
Gilgon appears and sits down. "Oh, I don't know. I might quickly splash some disinfectant on the stump before I flee, to make sure the impaling doesn't cause an infection or gangrene."
Hymie smiles weakly, then asks Gilgon, "Anything?"
She shakes her head. "Just the usual. Same old stories - pretty much the same as we heard when we were here last year. There's a couple prospects for other Junior Goons, though, but I wouldn't trust any of them. But that's more your department, willpower-boy." She takes up the flagon in front of her and starts chugging.
AIF night can be pretty much any night this week. Or every night, even.
As I intoned at the end of the gaming session Tuesday night, after you crack open the monster shock trooper's head and gouge out a few choice nibbles of his brain, the rest of the group are all visibly taken aback. Franz is the only one that vocally slips, muttering to no one in particular, "What the zark did he just do?"
Hymie snaps commands ethereally. "Franz, Gilbert, stand watch over the two tunnels that lead in here. We want plenty of warning if anybody tries something while we're taking inventory and still hurting." His commands are complete with a tactical layout of how he wants them deployed. He pauses, then, and levels a stony look at Gilgon. "Check him out", and gestures at you. Then he looks at you and says, "Just hang tight while Gilgon makes sure you're OK, and when she's done come help me sift through this crap." With that, he starts rummaging through the racks and piles of random items of the stash.
Gilgon approaches you, looking concerned, and attempts to make contact with the nano-node by your right temple. "How are you feeling?" Physically, you feel fine.
Well, obviously I stop the brain feast as soon as I realize something is up. I’ll let Gilgon look me over.
“I’m feeling ok, minus the combat wounds of course. What’s up?”
If I were smarter I would have probably come up with a quick excuse like I heard it was a tribal show of respect to eat the brain of a fallen enemy... which is sort of what it was, mixed with blood lust of course... but I don’t think Shedu would have come up with anything that quick. He’s probably going to look rather confused as he wonders what local taboo he’s violated.
Actually, thinking back to the encounter with that pack of demon-wolves... I remember them licking the face off of the dead guys, do I remember if they did any brain feasting?
Yes, you have some clear memory of the lupus-diaboli crunching through the frontal skull region of those dead guys and wolfing down (pardon the pun) the grey matter therein, after using barbed tongues to lick off the faces.
Gilgon stares intently directly into your eyes, which might be either exciting or threatening depending on your regard for comely chorkish females, though if you're insightful enough you might grasp that she's watching for neurological twitchings evidenced in your pupils. "What's up," she says with that particular kind of over-calmness employed by medical personnel throughout the known galaxies, "is that you might be about to experience a drastic transition into insanity. Or worse." You feel an unpleasant prickling under your scales, and even though you're sure it's psychosomatic, that doesn't make you feel any better about it.
"So, do you want to tell me what made you do that?"
“Ah, I don’t feel particularly insane. At least not more so than usual.” I pause in thought a little...
“Y’know, eating your fallen enemy isn’t all that uncommon on the city-planets. Compared to the free slop they offer most places, a tasty nibble or two of someone that just tried to kill you is often a satisfying end to a battle. It isn’t the first time I’ve done this. But if there’s some kind of local taboo against it, I’ll resist the urge next time. But seriously, there’s nothing wrong with me. Why would something like this make me go insane? And what would be the ‘Or worse’ part?”
Gilgon impales you with one of those looks that only alpha-females can transfix you with, because you don't expect a titan to be peering out at you through the eyes of a lamb. ...Ah, just trying to evoke the disparity of a green character chatting with a seasoned one. No actual stabbing involved.
"Well, Lashy McStab, you happen to be on the business end of a local idiosyncrasy. There's all sorts of local tales and yokel explanations, mostly dealing with magic or The Force, and you probably would have heard various stories if you had survived being on this moon for any significant length of time. They think that the Demon Wolves are powerful entities of some sort, ghosts or demons or whatever, that happen to take the physical form of really scary quadrupeds. At least, this is the their attempt to explain how clever and insightful the Demon Wolves can be, for essentially being just dumb animals. And many think the Demon Wolves feed their eldritch powers by eating the brains of those they kill."
Gilgon checks an instrument in her med kit, and seems satisfied. "Which, incidentally, is probably the reason why some of the locals are known to eat the brains of the Demon Wolves - to tap into some of that power. And, of course, this crazy ghost story gets some serious mileage out of the fact that it sometimes works." You get that reality-focussing feeling, like some cosmic dice are rolled (and they are, and they rolled low). "By the way, you aren't going insane. At least, not from anything we need to worry about this instant."
She glances over at Hymie, who is still rummaging. "Are we holing up or punching out?"
"Unless I find a surprise supply of patches, punching out might be dumb. A lucky hit on any of us will drop us. How many patches have you got left?"
Without looking, Gilgon says, "Seventeen".
"How many to get us up to strength?"
"Say twelve, conservatively speaking."
"Ugh." Hymie leans out from behind a pile. "Well, there's no patches here, but there's med packs." He throws two to each of you. "Distribute these to the guys, and set to healing Franz first. We're holing up." With that he returns to rummaging.
Gilgon gestures for you to follow her as she heads towards Gilbert's position. I'm guessing that you follow. "So, anyway, trying to spare you the precise details of the biological mechanisms at work here, but the Demon Wolves eat the brains of their prey for a reason. Their nervous system is connected to their digestive system, allowing them to extract understanding from the brains they eat. It doesn't make them smarter, like most locals suspect, but they do seem to sometimes get a poignant understanding of what their victim was about. I personally think it's a natural mechanism, evolved for being better hunters, but it's too intricate to be sure."
You both stop off at Gilbert's corner with its view down the tunnel you came down, and you leave him a med pack. "The funky part is that due to it's impressible nature, the Demon Wolf brain can also transfer understanding of the beast to those that eat it. Sometimes. With mixed results. Usually, nothing really happens, but the fact that the dude had to kill a Demon Wolf to try in the first place is probably something of an adrenalin high anyway. In the cases where there is some real effect, it makes the eater temporarily insane. Or not-so-temporarily. Sometimes, the eater develops an ability to shift in and out of sanity at will, which actually can be quite useful."
You arrive at Franz's corner, overlooking a tunnel you haven't seen before. This one is much more roughly finished dirt with less bracing than the chamber and tunnel you have seen so far. Gilgon hands over the spare pack, and lays out her pack to start working on Franz. "Now, that big scary dude had all the hallmarks of being slightly and ever-so-usefully insane. Which meant that his nervous system might have been somewhat soaked in Demon Wolf brains, and there was a chance for you to be affected and go insane."
Franz pipes in, "Or worse."
Gilgon nods. "Or worse."
“Wow... Um, did you include my 6 patches in the 17 count?”
“Check... no more eating brains. That’s just creepy. Don’t see why anyone would want to risk insanity that way... but well, people are dumb.” I smirk at that one, considering my intelligence level.
“So, do you want me to grab a pack and work on Franz too, or is it ok to wander to a corner and lick my own wounds? Oh, and I’m just dying to know what the ‘or worse’ part is... if you’ll ignore the pun.”
"No Lashy, I didn't include your 6 in the count. It's presumptions like that which I avoid so as to reduce instances of being stabbed." Gilgon gives you a wink.
Franz chimes in, as he breaks open his med pack to start working on himself at half-pace while he keeps watch. "Don't underestimate the power of the crazy side. An extra attack and extra stamina are damn useful."
Gilgon applies a regenerative mesh to a nasty blast-burn on Franz. "No, you should go ahead and heal yourself."
Franz glances at you after a careful listen down the tunnel, the smiles at Gilgon. "Lashy, eh?"
"When was the last time you actually saw somebody use a whip in combat?"
"True enough. Lashy the Lizard; it works. What was the nickname you gave that last Red Shirt?"
"You mean Trogdor?"
"Right, The Burninator."
"Yeah, home-made flame throwers aren't so great when you spend all your time in forests and buildings made of wood. It was almost a relief when he exploded. I was getting sick of patching up burns on all of us."
"Ha! I was sick of getting burned. I hate to think of how Hymie must have felt, being mingling with Trogdor's targets. Still, you have to admit that ol' Trogdor worked magic at keeping the Demon Wolves at bay."
"That he did. Of course, they also seemed to have an uncanny fondness for him. They were always sneaking up on him and licking off patches of skin." Gilgon brandishes an unpleasant-looking medical implement and says to Franz, "This is going to sting, so don't start screaming and crying like a child, as usual."
Franz winces as his flesh is infiltrated with robotic fibres. He opens on eye, and looks at you. "So you want to know what's 'worse'? How about you guess, and we'll tell you if you're right."
Gilgon grins malevolently. "You're just trying to distract yourself from the intense pain. C'mon big fella, show me a tear."
I crack open the med pack and start working on myself.
"Let's think, what's worse. Well, you might drop dead. That would be worse. Or maybe your intellect drops to that of an animal and the mass consiousness of demon wolves calls to you and you lope off to the jungle to become one of them. Which is of course a cunning way for them to bring in food."
"Or maybe you start growing a parasite in your bowel that grows and eventually escapes in one massive fart. The parsite then attacks and eats you." (I've been reading Steven King lately.)
"Or maybe you start enjoying rap music."
"So, how often do you guys lose 'Red Shirts'?"
They laugh.
Franz smiles with really big square teeth. "We almost never lose a Red Shirt; we know exactly where most of them are." Gilgon rolls her eyes. "Seriously though, technically I was a Red Shirt, and so was Gilbert. There's strength in numbers, but the ol' battle wagon only has so much room, so it's mostly a matter optimizing the situation. We'd be best off with no Red Shirts, and all professionals, but we take what we can get."
Gilgon talks without looking up. "Actually, we were originally all professionals, including me and a techie as not-so-combatants. The battle wagon is that techie's handiwork, and it's kind of set the parameters for our wee troupe of hooligans." She purses her lips, and gets a firm grip on the piece of anatomy she's working on, then makes a quick motion. Franz flinches and grimaces.
"Gah! You miserable worm-infested Gilth-felching SludgeMutt fucker!"
"Sorry."
After a couple deep breaths, and another long locate down the tunnel, Franz tilts his head towards yours with an earnest look about his beady brow. "You weren't far off with your second guess. Sometimes, after someone scarfs down Demon Wolf brains, they tremble and convulse and scream. Then they stop, and never speak another word. Sometimes they hang around for a while, either watching with an eerie calm or killing people with an even eerier calm. But sooner or later, they leave, and go into the wildest part of the forest, and have their brains eaten."
Franz licks his teeth and lips with a nervous solemnity, and Gilgon maintains a tight-lipped mask while rigidly staring at her work. Awkward silence swallows unspoken words, and you're left with only the sounds of Hymie rummaging back in the racks and the sounds of worms eating dirt.
At that, me thinks I'll remain silent and continue working away with the med pack.
After that, Shedu dies. Such is the existence of an AIF character.
