Having
recently described an encounter my Immortal Spartans characters had with She, I dug out the adventure where they first met her. This is
not written to be a complete ready-to-run scenario. Some assembly is required. If you plan on running it you’ll need to decide how it's going to work as part of a meta-campaign. Probably it will be the pilot episode, so you're laying the hints of a much bigger mythos here, and as you'll be developing that mythos over adventures spanning centuries you need to give it some thought. Certainly you'll want to change the adventure considerably from the version written for my campaign, especially in the final part, and it’s worth reading
H Rider Haggard’s novel before you start. Just don’t expect great literature.
I ran the game as one of our Sunday specials, starting at midday and playing through till the evening. So you could fit it into about eight hours, either in one epic session or two or three regular ones. The characters don't have to start as immortals, but if they play their cards right they could end up that way, thus kicking off a meta-campaign that could run right through from 800 AD onwards. The setting is historical SF. There are some psionics, often regarded by the player-characters as witches, but in fact this is not fantasy and there is no actual magic.
OK, so it was 80 years before
the Constantinople campaign, and the characters were living in
Baghdad in the reign of Harun al-Rashid. In an ill-starred foray to the ruins of Uruk, three of the Spartans had lost their regenerative ability. Now mortal and aging, they were willing to clutch at any straw when their agents brought them stories of an undying ruler in Africa. Hoping that she had the secret of immortality and (an even longer shot) that she’d be willing to share it, they set out…
IN SEARCH OF THE ETERNAL FLAME
At Sohar , which at this
time (800 AD) is a small port, they are warned of bad weather in the southern seas for the next month or so. But time is
of the essence. Having established the rumoured location of the kingdom of Kôr (roughly
in modern Zambia) they decided the logical beachhead for their expedition would
be the islands of Zanzibar, where they should at least find some people who
speak Arabic as the local jumbees, or chiefs, occasionally sell slaves to Arab
traders. They set sail.
ZANZIBAR
The jumbe
(chief) is Uwal. He greets them in a
wicker domed hut (tunnel-like entrances low so you have to bow, smoky interior)
and recognizes any characters who frequently sail these waters. He asks if the
jumbe Haroun of Baghdad got his gifts – “When will he come? I will kill twenty
goats and twenty pigs for him, and open forty jars of wine.”
Uwal knows about the Amahagger (“the people of the
caves”) who live in the interior of the mainland but has no dealings with them,
except for once long ago when his people bought a mummy from the Amahagger for
medicinal purposes. “But it was never ground up for medicine. One of our
ancestors fell in love with it, so now the mummy has her own hut and speaks to
the wise woman Kitar.”
The mummy (known as Hiwah) is perfectly preserved.
Around its neck is a crystal pendant in the shape of an eye.
Other townsfolk if names are needed: Bonash, Gurt,
Kolo, Febil.
DOWN THE COAST
Three days out from Zanzibar, they catch sight of two
vessels that the lookout thinks are suspicious. These are indeed pirate ships, crewed by Africans and
escaped Arabian slaves. In my game there were about a score of them, but you'll tailor them to your own player-characters.
The pirates will try to board. However, in the midst
of the battle huge black storm clouds sweep down from the north. The characters
will need all their sailing skills to avoid a wreck: three ship-handling rolls
at -3. Unless any are critical successes, the ship will still limp damaged to
the mouth of a wide river where they see the following breathtaking feature.
THE CLIFF FACE
A massive cliff carved with the face of a man or
sphinx. The river leads to an islet that they may (Architecture or Engineer
roll) recognize as man-made, albeit very ancient. Beyond stretches a marsh.
They can follow the river for a few miles until it is
impossible to get the ship further. They can take a small boat upriver from
here, every so often encountering shallow areas where they need to drag it
over. The river here leaks out into miles of marshland.
As the temperature and humidity rise, to say nothing
of the difficulty of the terrain, overheating becomes a problem:
- 2-pt armour => Fatigue Points at 70% of normal
- 3-pt armour => Fatigue at 60%
- 4-pt amour => Fatigue at 50%
- 5-pt armour => Fatigue at 40%
- 6-pt armour => Fatigue at 30%
This is in addition to the encumbrance penalty of
equipment, which is doubled.
CROCS AND HIPPOS AND GNATS, OH MY
The crocodiles
and hippos are the biggest
threats on the lower reaches of the river. If characters are out hunting, they
have a 1 in 6 chance of being ambushed by a croc (Stealth 19) and there is
really nothing to do but run.
Mosquitoes become an increasing problem as the river peters out into a network of
reed-choked canals that eventually merge with the swamp. Characters have a 1 in
3 chance of contracting fever
each day.
The swamps are impassable unless you either know the
route or have the eye-shaped crystal
pendant from Zanzibar, which will reveal a trail where Hiya has sent her
far-visioning effect. The latter doesn’t tell you where firm ground is, of
course, but at least it gives a bearing for the direction of Kôr. Also, if somebody
is looking through the pendant when Hiya is actually watching them remotely it
will give the user a glimpse of her.
THE AMAHAGGER
A party of Amahagger come upon them, led by Bilali, a white-bearded elder. Speaking
in Ancient Arabic, he says that “the Goddess” has sent him to escort them to
her.
The Amahagger are tall, saffron-brown skinned people
with handsome but sullen faces. The womenfolk seem to have considerable freedom
and even authority compared to life in Muslim lands.
At the home of this “household” of Amahagger, who live
in tombs left by the ancients (there are ten households in all), they encounter
a woman called Ustane. (See She
for how you might use her in the game.)
Bilali says he must travel to see the Goddess, Hiya,
to ask her instructions with regard to the strangers. He will be back in five
days.
HUNTING AND HOTPOTTING
The other Amahagger are far less friendly to them than
Bilali. Their expressions suggest a sort of aloof contempt. Possibly somebody
will suggest going hunting to prove themselves.
There are also rhinos, but no sense in even giving
stats for those.
If they offend the household, there will be a
hot-potting ritual. A firepit is prepared, and jars of corn liquor handed
around. Each man has his spear beside him.
One guy: "Where
is the flesh that we shall eat?"
All stretch out their right arms towards the fire and
reply: "The flesh will come."
First guy: "Is
it a goat?"
All: "It is
a goat without horns, and more than a goat, and we shall slay it."
Turning half round they one and all grasp the handles
of their spears with the right hand, and then simultaneously let them go.
First guy: "Is
it an ox?"
All: "It is
an ox without horns, and more than an ox, and we shall slay it.”
Again the spears are grasped, and again let go. Then
they will start to caress and speak endearments to the one they mean to
sacrifice.
First guy: "Is
the meat ready to be cooked?"
All: "It is
ready; it is ready."
First guy: "Is
the pot hot to cook it?"
All: "It is
hot; it is hot."
First they entangle the victim in a net (GURPS page
441). Then, taking iron pincers, they remove a heated pot from the fire and
clamp it over the victim’s head. There are a couple of dozen Amahagger warriors here:
Hopefully Bilali will return before anybody is
actually killed.
OFF TO SEE THE GODDESS
Bilali says he will take them to Hiya, but they must
leave all their belongings and weapons here.
If they refuse, he says he will not take them. If they
threaten him, he warns them that Hiya can see all and will slay them before
they have gone half the distance. “And she would kill me, her servant, if I
were to capitulate to thy demands. Thus I advise thee to accept the invitation
of the Goddess and do as she commands, for thus far thou hast earned only her
curiosity and not her wrath.”
They are made to strip and are reclothed in yellow
linen robes, and given wooden staves, then put into litters and carried towards
a region of miasmic swamp.
BILALI TAKES A TUMBLE
Crossing the swamp, a snake bites one of the bearers
of Bilali’s litter and he goes into the water. If not rescued, he is sucked
down into the mud and drowned.
THE CITY OF KÔR
Built inside a high-sided crater, which the characters
might assume is volcanic. The walls of the crater were excavated long ago,
making a tunnel right through the side.
Inside, the Amahagger of the main “house” live in the
tombs left by the ancient civilization of Kôr.
Far off in the centre of the crater (about three miles
away) lie the ruins of Kôr. This is where Hiya lives with her deaf-&-dumb
servants, guarded by the Fanewatch (her elite Amahagger bodyguard, numbering
about fifty).
The walls of Kôr itself are toppled now, but once must
have been mightier than any city built since. At the gates (a collapsed arch)
stands the Vaal.
THE GODDESS APPEARS
Hiya will use her projection device to appear floating
in the air surrounded by a white tesla-coil type aura.
Hiya
Hiya (= “She”) is ruler of the lost civilization of
Kôr in the heart of Africa. She was born Aisha bint Harb, 900 years ago in
Arabia, a child prodigy who was raised with the best education possible, and on
her parents’ death outfitted her own expedition to Kôr where she came across a
crashed alien starship, was bathed in the radiation of its autodoc, and became
immortal. Around the crater she found other artefacts of ancient alien
technology and has been busy learning about them ever since. (Of course, her
understanding of these artefacts is not that they are of extraterrestrial
origin, but simply that they are left over from a very ancient civilization.)
Her goal is to sweep away religions and kingdoms to
create a new world order in which women have equal status to men. This is not
so much for moral reasons, though she certainly remembers and resents how
neighbours in Arabia treated her as a young girl with an education. Her aim,
having seen what technology is capable of achieving, is to build a society in
which learning is paramount so that those ancient marvels can be replicated and
surpassed.
She has a Chamber of the Far-Travelling Carpet with a
pattern of tiles on the floor that create a dimensional “carpet” which allows
her to travel across great distances. The effect is like teleportation, and the
portal remains hanging in the air until she returns to it. Using this, she has
been disrupting the Silk Road trade from a hidden mountain fortress above
Samarkand.
Her own primary skills are Stealth, Acrobatics and Aikido-style
martial arts. She only loses -2 per successive Dodge.
Her main ability is Altered Time Rate, allowing her to
act two times faster than normal. Usually she’ll all-out defend (+2), use extra
effort (+2), and retreat (+3) while looking to get away – which she can do
fast.
If forced to attack, she’ll use a baton in each hand
(ambidextrous, trained in off-hand use) allowing her four strikes per round
(extra -2 to hit location when aiming to use Pressure Points).
Hiya's bodyguard
As well as the Fanewatch, Hiya
has three automata* she has salvaged from the alien ship:
Hiya's special items**
Her ancient devices (weapons of a people she calls the
Strangers) are:
- A belt of shield
- A ring of force
- A blaster gun
- A teleportation ring (to a preset location within 5 km)
Each has twenty charges and can be recharged in the “Eternal
Flame”, ie the alien ship’s power source.
Blaster Gun
A heavy item
that must be held along one arm. The beam will blast open any door, push down
walls of mortar or stone, or smash a 3m
tunnel through solid rock. It is aimed, striking a single target at a range of
up to 15m. Damage is 20d up to 3m, then 2d less per extra metre.
To activate this
“on the fly” requires a critical IQ roll to “remember” its operation, otherwise
practice with it and reroll every week.
Shield
This creates an
invisible barrier at a distance of 1 metre from the user that reduces the momentum
of any rapidly incoming (not outgoing) object or attack. Projectiles are
automatically stopped, but slow-moving attacks such as lava or poison gas are
not impeded. Enemies must spend six rounds pushing through this force field
before they can attack the user. Lasts ten minutes per charge.
Ring of Force
It flings the
target away (the intensity is optional, from a strong wind to a Ben Grimm sized
clobber) but doesn’t necessarily damage them.
She also has:
- Far-vision screen Can send out an
invisible “camera” – but has to be sent laboriously to a location at a maximum
speed of 100 mph because the calibration doesn’t work.
- “Magic carpet” A device that creates
a circular pattern of whirling coloured lights that she can step to anywhere in
the world, but always must return to the device here in Kôr.***
THE THRONE ROOM
This is a chamber that runs central to the warren of
burial chambers and embalming rooms (now used by the Amahagger as apartments).
It may once have been a kind of temple, as there is a dais at the far end where
Hiya has her throne. She will only come here in person if people are to be
tried for crimes.
On the dais is an inscription in a pictographic
language that they may recognize as that of “the ancients”. Hiya will
translate:
"In
the year four thousand two hundred and fifty-nine from the founding of the City
of imperial Kôr was this cave (or burial place) completed by Tisno, King of
Kôr, the people thereof and their slaves having laboured thereat for three
generations, to be a tomb for their citizens of rank who shall come after. May
the blessings of the heaven above the heaven rest upon their work, and make the
sleep of Tisno, the mighty monarch, the likeness of whose features is graven
above, a sound and happy sleep till the day of awakening, and also the sleep of
his servants, and of those of his race who, rising up after him, shall yet lay
their heads as low."
And if the characters are interested in that, she
crosses to the left-hand side of the cave (looking towards the entrance) and
signs to the mutes to hold up the lamps. On the wall is something painted with
a red pigment in similar characters to those hewn beneath the sculpture of
Tisno, King of Kôr. She translates it thus:
"I,
Junis, a priest of the Great Temple of Kôr, write this upon the rock of the
burying-place in the year four thousand eight hundred and three from the
founding of Kôr. Kôr is fallen! No more shall the mighty feast in her halls, no
more shall she rule the world, and her navies go out to commerce with the
world. Kôr is fallen! and her mighty works and all the cities of Kôr, and all
the harbours that she built and the canals that she made, are for the wolf and
the owl and the wild swan, and the barbarian who comes after. Twenty and five
moons ago did a cloud settle upon Kôr, and the hundred cities of Kôr, and out
of the cloud came a pestilence that slew her people, old and young, one with
another, and spared not. One with another they turned black and died--the young
and the old, the rich and the poor, the man and the woman, the prince and the
slave. The pestilence slew and slew, and ceased not by day or by night, and
those who escaped from the pestilence were slain of the famine. No longer could
the bodies of the children of Kôr be preserved according to the ancient rites,
because of the number of the dead, therefore were they hurled into the great
pit beneath the cave, through the hole in the floor of the cave. Then, at last,
a remnant of this the great people, the light of the whole world, went down to the
coast and took ship and sailed northwards; and now am I, the Priest Junis, who
write this, the last man left alive of this great city of men, but whether
there be any yet left in the other cities I know not. This do I write in misery
of heart before I die, because Kôr the Imperial is no more, and because there
are none to worship in her temple, and all her palaces are empty, and her
princes and her captains and her traders and her fair women have passed off the
face of the earth."
THE DANCE OF TIME
This is performed one evening by the Amahagger in the
space outside the caves. The characters are led to chairs, facing out into the
twilight. They watch groups of dancers waiting far off as the sky grows dark.
Then there are eruptions of sparks. Men dance nearer,
waving their spears, and as they come they set fire to corpses that were staked
out for the purpose (the embalmed bodies burning easily). Behind them, the
fires mark out the stars of the constellation Mulgirtab (as it was known to the
Babylonians) or Scorpio or al-‘Aqrab as they know it today. (This is the
direction of the galactic core.)
Coming near to a dais where women pour water and pick
fruit, the warriors are seen to be covered with scale-like symbols painted in
white. They circle the dais and leave three of their number, apparently to
guard the women. Then another group (painted in whorls and wave-symbols) rush
in from all directions to attack the first, and the fighting is carried off
into the darkness. The three left guarding the dais stare off into the dark,
spears raised defensively at each cry in the distance, and sparks fly up but no
fire catches.
Then they hear others approaching – but it is their
enemies. They fight them off, but are mortally wounded. One of the women comes
to tend to the last of the scale warriors, who presents her with his torch.
THE ETERNAL FLAME
However the characters interpret the dance, they can
find out from Hiya about the starship (she calls it “the metal egg”) lodged in
caverns in the far wall of the crater. This is where she acquired immortality.
The starship was the cause of the crater. Millennia
ago it impacted the ground inside its collapsing energy shield, which liquified
the rock but left the ship itself relatively unharmed. It then skidded into the
wall of congealing lava at the crater rim and, as the shields finally went
down, the ship’s reactor core vented through the lava forming a dendritic
network of tunnels – which was how the intrepid Aisha (as she was then) was
able to reach it.
The immortality treatment that she received
inadvertently was inspired, not to say stolen, from Larry Niven’s novel A World Out Of Time. The journey through the caverns I swiped wholesale from HRider Haggard, adding only a protean creature called the Nammu for the sake of
giving them a thrilling battle before they could enter the ship. Tekumel players will recognize that the Nammu is based on the nshe. The rationale for
it being here is that it was an artificial sentinel created to protect the ship,
dormant at the time of the crash, and something Hiya did on her previous visit
here reactivated it.
The Nammu
Tentacles
ATTACK 16 damage: 3d+3 [and acid slime]
Armour 5 (maximum of 1 HP from any missile)
HIT POINTS 60
It will extrude 1-4 tentacles each round, generally
using these to strike at different targets (but see below).
Acidic coating
- Each tentacle is coated in an acidic jelly and will continue to
burn through a character's armour after he is touched. The jelly does 2d in the first round, then 1d. If it has not burned its way
through the armour by then, the character will take no damage. Each time
armour is burnt through, it permanently loses 1 Armour Point.
Disjection
- Nammu can apply this power in any round in which it extrudes three
or more tentacles. The chance it will choose to do so is 45%. The chance
of the target evading the tentacles
is as a -5 Dodge for three tentacles, -10 for four tentacles. Nammu does
not need to make any roll to hit.
- The target is lifted aloft if he has not dodged, and Nammu attempts
to sunder him limb from limb. Each round, the seized character can attempt
to resist by making a -5 HT
check. If he fails he takes 4d
damage, but if he succeeds he only takes 2d. Armour doesn't count, of
course.
- While disjecting a character, Nammu cannot extrude further
appendages to strike at his companions. Nammu will not normally drop a
character it is disjecting until it has reduced the character to zero
HP. However, a single hit for more
than 10 HP will cause it to do so; also, the character can try to break free by making a -10 ST check
each round.
Engulfment
- Rather than attacking with its tentacles, Nammu may choose to apply
its power to Engulf a character.
This is checked for at the start of each round (unless it is
already in the process of disjecting someone); the chance is 30%.
- Engulfment affects a 3m area (roughly 1-6 people). A target who
fails to dodge is caught in a cohesive blob of water in which he may
drown. He makes a HT check each round: first with no
modifier, then at -3, then -6, etc.
A failed roll means 2d
damage (no armour) and the victim is also drowning (see below).
- Drowning: roll Swimming
every 5 seconds or inhale water, losing
1 FP. When FP = 0 you black out and will soon drown.
- To break free of
Engulfment, critical Swimming.
You can also fight back to injure Nammu from within, but this counts as Close Combat and half damage.
Footnotes
* Tekumel players may recognize the assassin android as the Alluring Maiden of Nga, but in fact Prof Barker was inspired by the Silver Maid in Alexander Korda's 1940 movie The Thief of Bagdad. The Vaal was originally inspired by ru'un.
** Most of these will be familiar to Tekumel players as equivalent to some of the "Eyes".
*** My conceit here was to have a device that could be described as a magic carpet, as a nod to the Arabian Nights, without actually having it be a piece of flying cloth.
