(Gamma World) Not a Test #82 - The Caves of Refuge

Our two heroes, Lathar and Pete, pursue the strange travelers who have arrived in Riverbend, and just happened to steal some vital items in the midst of an attack.

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In this scene....

Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout.  Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.  

Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend.  He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters.  Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does.   Looking for trouble in all the right places.  Former jousting champion of Fair-Town.  Badly wounded from a previous encounter with 

Back in Riverbend....

Sonny Helianthus: a nearly 10' tall sentient sunflower artifact examiner with trusted Restorationist ties. Knowledgeable,  but not a good one with device repairs or upgrades. Just went out of his comfort zone to rescue Lathar from becoming a human sacrifice to "The Beast." 

Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often.   He  has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair.

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After a quick lesson in manners left the duo at the mercy of strange humanoids (see episode #80), Lathar and Pete composed themselves and were more dedicated than ever to find those who stole the mead from Riverbend.  

Lathar did his best to hide the extent of his injuries, the mutants reflecting Pete's blaster bolt towards him did far more damage than he was willing to admit.  Pete appreciated Lathar's appreciation of finding the mead thieves, but could easily detect a new limp in the barbarian as they traversed the clearing. 

The clearing turned back into a sparse, somewhat marshy light forest.   The tracks they had been following maintained.  The hills were rising in front of them.  They were leaving the area most would consider the hinterlands of Riverbend into unknown lands.

After a short rest, the continued, until they came up a faded red shipping container, covered in trees and vines.  The doors to the container were open and darkness lurked inside.   The cut through some of the growth .to get to the entrance, and Pete stood still.  In front of him was a fairly well hidden trip wire, leading up to a sharp metal farm tool positioned to swing down if triggered.

A voice from above surprised them:  "Don't come in!" 

Lathar spoke into the darkness, trying to coax the voice out into the open, until the voice directed them to the top of the container.  Taking a few steps back, they noticed a wooden structure wrapped in the dried vines, a lone human head popped out of the window.  

Hiding in the hut was Devin, a very tired and hungry human.  He had seen the "pretty humans" travel through the area a short bit ago.  "They headed towards the cave."

Lathar offered him some food, and he willingly climbed out of his window and scrounge up what the duo had thrown up atop the container.  

Devin was a guant, boney man, obviously suffering the effects of starvation.  He scooped up the food and ate wholeheartedly.  He was dressed in simple clothes that had been worn for a long time.  

Devin had been a simple villager, form a village on the other side of the hills.  A lone massive wolf, make multiple attacks on the village, forcing everyone to flee for their lives.  Others swore that there was more than one wolf, but Devin never saw more than one.   The other villagers either perished by the wolf, or fell to the perils of the cave.  He hadn't seen another person, besides the beautiful people, since before winter.  

Still paranoid of the emaciated man, they pointed in the relative direction of Fair-Town, telling him there were safe communities beyond the woods, and bid Devin adieu.  

Surprisingly, Peter was still able to pick up the trail of the trio they were hunting, and it did lead them to a wide cave mouth....

The Entrance to the Caves

Compiling some light sources, they entered.    Pete was so focused on traps or ambushes in the near dark, that he surprised himself by kicking into a pile of fairly recent decomposed bones.  The multiple bodies were bereft of flesh, but still wore some recent tatters of clothing.  They weren't the trio they sought, so Pete pushed on. 

Pete also notice the two long grooves, two or three inches deep and 18 inches apart from each other, running through the center of the cavern.  

They came upon a cave-in or collapse to the side.  Pete found a pair of boots sticking out of the rocks, and Pete focused on revealing who met their demise there.  Examining the boots, Pete then attempted to move the stones.  

Lathar stood beside the weasel and questioned his motive, "Let's just move on.  The guy in the trio didn't wear boots, so unless he stole those too, this isn't one of our guys.  We need to get moving."

Leaving that area, they moved down towards a 15 foot wide passageway.  There were more bodies, mostly reduced to husks, if not outright skeletons.   Pete navigated through a series of almost obvious traps.  

The passageway continued a long way, without any major deviation or intersections.  

Pete's ears perked up, the sound of a odd tinny instrument was playing... probably in front of them down the passageway.  

Lathar, on the other hand, heard a disturbing sound of slurping and licking, of some odd creature.

"Pete get down...."

Pete hit the deck, as Lathar brandished his blaster rifle, unleashing a series of blaster shots down the hallway. into the darkness.  They travel a far distance before disappearing. 

"What was it? Did you hear the music."

"No!!!! I heard something that wanted to eat us. I don't hear it anymore.  I'm going to thrown my grenade down the hall..."

"Hold on, maybe we can throw a makeshift torch to toss further down there.  Maybe it will scare it away first."

The cobbled together and torch out of sackcloth and lantern oil, and with a mighty heave , launched it down the hall.  

Lathar:  "You know we can leave..."

Pete:  "Nonsense!  You're going to turn back on the fact of some lip-smacker?  Onward!"  

Using a melee weapon to pick up the torch, they continued tossing the torch further, until they were met with a volley of small, but annoyingly painful rocks.  

They couldn't see anything outside the range of the torch, and when Pete tried to reach out to any lifeform, and met a foreign feeling entity that felt like it was screaming back to the weasel.  

Adjusting their eyes, the passageway had opened into a larger cavern.  More rocks flew at Pete and Lathar, hurting both.  Pete unslung his assault rifle and ran towards the origin of the flying rocks.  Three robed individuals could be seen retreating, flailing their arms and sending more rocks at them.  Lathar moved forward as well, and together, they killed the three robed individuals before they fled down a different passageway.  

All their foes, dead, they found out their opponents had been a human, a bird-man, and a mutant, bipedal octopus.  

The only other item in this section of the cavern that caught their eye, was a large stone slab propped up with a desiccated body atop it.  The victim, a human man, had been brutally opened up and his vital organs removed.  Some still sat in jars at the foot of the altar.  Outside of some crude knives, and an odd wooden tube, there was nothing else.  

What had been occurring, prior to the blaster shots flying into the cavern.

The pushed down the passageway the robed individuals had desired to take, but upon hearing a large clamor of multiple things quickly moving away, they decided further investigate a different direction. 

Returning to the cavern with the altar, they followed the grooves in the floor until it reached a wrough iron ladder standing straight up into the darkness of the top of the cave roof.  

Pete scrambled up the ladder, Lathar following in tow.    Pete climbed through a hole in the cavern roof, leading to a different cave with a subtle blue glow.  Popping his head out through the hole

Blue crystals attached to the walls, provided the glow.  Stalagmites and stalactites were carved with  faces of humans in pain and torture.  Pete swore on his parents' graves that he could hear the faces scream in his brain, "Help us!!!" 

He hastily reached out to the voice, but felt nothing.... nothing but a low roar of an audible voice. 

"You came willingly????  That's a change.  I can do great works with your souls, they are very talented."

The Beast of the Ladder

The monstrosity in front of them was wielding a metal skull with spinal column attached.  The duo pulled out their blasters and hit it with two epic shots before the beast reached them.  Using the base of the spinal column, it swung the skull around.  Pete and Lathar scurried away, mere inches from blows that shattered some of the blue crystals.  Even prone and on his back, Pete continued his barrage, eventually dropping the epic beast.  

"I am not defeated... I am through everything, have won and lost at every spot.  This is nothing..."

With the beast expired, they scavenged some of the blue crystals, grabbed the beasts very heavy skull and spine.. which was confirmed as solid metal, and hastily retreated from the cave.  

There was no sign of the Devin at the container, and they hastily set up a quick camp to recover a bit before successfully returning to Riverbend.  

Dropping their finds off at Lathar's Mom's house, they then arrived at Farmer Yulius'.  A new, much larger shed had been built for Sonny and entering found Sonny, Squiggles, and number of the worm children, and, chained in the corner, a large podog that was not at all amused....

Looking up their beaten and weary compatriots, Sonny didn't bat an eye and turned to Squiggles: "Hey, they're alive, you owe me a domar..."

GM Notes:  The pair got extremely lucky, as I only made two roll high enough to hit them... and then did measly damage.The session was heavily borrowed by The Cave of Refuge: The Mines of Misery by Cyrus Duane, available at DriveThruRPG.com.  It's meant to be a funnel adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics, I removed some of the miscellaneous gear and sections, because the duo were already perseverating on every detail, when their mission was to apprehend and punish those who stole the mead.  

Next: #83 - The Curse of the Metal Spine