Sandbox - Thread Artifact

In longer campaigns I tend to make semi-geographical maps of plot threads to keep track of, both as a player and a GM. As the current campaign has nearly reached a crossroads, I drew up one for my players to help them decide what's to be tackled next. Partly this is to help me keep track of the big picture and old threads (some nearly faded to insignificance, even just over twenty sessions in), but also to reduce wasted prep.

The Golden Archipelago

The fourth phase of Yirith: Age of Low Adventure

Sessions 18-

SPOILERS for "Reach of the Roach God." 8000 words.

Session 18, “Bugging Out at Quiet Lake”

Two wayward souls tromped along the unnamed river on the largest island of the Golden Archipelago, once the domain of the Monkey Empire, when simians ruled tropical Yirith. Dungan pushed aside the reeds with his staff, wary as always, wondering if the odd sorceries he carried in his head would be of use. Salome perhaps should have known better than to wear her usual flowing garments for this journey, her sweat had washed her war ochres into the material, and she was already concocting fictions to explain her messy appearance. These two odd friends carried spices, cardamom and black peppercorns, and dreamed of facilitating an exchange one day with profits that would allow them to settle down and retire. That wasn’t going to happen in the village that they were slogging to. It wasn’t even large enough to have a name, was just known as the village by the Quiet Lake.

It was curious that these travelers’ transit was on foot: both had been born aship, though each had lost their original home long ago. Dungan’s clan had been a seafaring people, their trade gradually reduced by the Hundred Taikuns, the merchant league of the Inner Sea. His birthplace no longer sailed the Indaskian Sea, a casualty of market efficiencies and massed coin. Salome had been birthed in stranger circumstances: she had breathed her first aboard a prahu in the Fleet of the Dead as it plied the Darkened Sea. She had disembarked in the Black Archipelago, but that is a story for another time.

“I heard the Gleaming Fins’ village upstream sells camphor with the souls of birds. Even the Taikuns send their ships there, Dung-uhn.”

“Yes, I know, and five days beyond, by water buffalo, is the Spider Mountain Temple. It’s ‘Doon-Yan’.” 

All they had in front of them was a small landing with six canoes and an oppressive forest that threatened to swallow everything, except maybe for the great, curving cliff that loomed behind the settlement. The bleating of goats broke through the cacophony of monkeys, birds, and insects in the trees.

“Ooh, I want to see the goats!” Salome said, striding right past the odd boat with a papered interior.

An open, thatched barn sat at one end of a corral, the gate and hut at the other. The tradeswoman held out some of her own rations as Dungan followed, gazing back at the few villagers staring at him. When the big billy-goat got close, Salome could see that something had bitten its neck, the wound just scabbed over. 

A cantankerous, frail old man came shuffling out of his home. His words shook when he challenged the strangers. Salome told him of the bite on his livestock, and he informed her that a kid had been stolen from his herd. He showed them a barb that had been stuck in the gate, scratching himself as he did so. The hook looked and felt like it belonged to an insect, but was alarmingly large. Dungan asked if any other animals had been taken from the village and the man scoffed; there were nothing but chickens in the other homes. The newcomers looked around, finding a bit of blood splashed on a leaf, odd footprints, and drag marks almost certainly belonging to the missing kid, leading to a trail into the forest. They began to negotiate their services and goods with the man–he was probably the richest in the village–and they ended up with a skin of goatsmilk.   

Dungan asked Ghikri, for that was the man’s name, if he knew the history of the area. The goatherder launched into a story, its rhythms suggesting that he’d told it many times before, perhaps to his children, or even his goats:

Long ago, before the monkeys built their empire, a runt demon was born, deep in the earth. His brothers bullied him, plucked all the hair from his body. Shamed, he slunk away through holes in the earth that his sisters could not squeeze through.

When the demon emerged from the earth, he saw stars in the sky, and one fell toward him. A maiden suddenly stood before him, and spoke her name, “Elalela.” She kissed his wounds and taught him the stories of the world. He fell in love, but when he was healed she stopped teaching, and told him he needed her no longer, and flew away into the sky.

The demon began crying. His body changed: his skin turned into a shell; his belly bloated with pus; his limbs shrivelled into spiny hooks. He cursed the world. His tears filled a lake. And that is how the Quiet Lake nearby was formed. The demon lives in the earth again, now, living an endless night.

A tea house stood in the middle of the village. Sojourners were welcome there. The smell of warming wine drifted outward, and the proprietor, Jinta, sat cutting red nuts, wrapping them into leaves. A burly woman with a thin mustache, Iba, sat on a bench and sipped tea quietly. The pair of adventurers were refreshed (paying for their meal with Ghikri’s milk), and learned where the home of the local charm-crafter, Musun, could be found, as well as their right to sleep under the roof here come nightfall. They heard the story of a dark form swooping low over the village, shrieking in a high-pitched voice.

When the sun was high in the sky, Salome and Dungan left for the beadswoman’s hut, and they saw Iba depart the tea house shortly after. The home was covered in charms, baubles and bangles hanging across every window and door. A form busied itself inside, a loud woman who shouted each answer to the questions posed by those outside. The interview produced the following information. The jangal was full of horrors: snakes and cats, insects and leeches. One needed protection to venture there.

“But leeches are good for you …” Salome argued.

“Bah! They will steal your memories and limbs!” Musun blared.

“These are not like leeches I know,” Salome responded, quietly. 

“If we need to take memories …” Dungan trailed off.

Musun admitted that a man-bat had been rooting through her wares on her payang, despite her hex paper. It had surely stolen her pearl necklace. Dungan’s further inquiries indicated that bat-men were not exactly common here. Salome did not say out loud how little she thought of Musun’s protections.

A baby’s bawling drew the merchants’ eyes toward a young woman hurrying toward the tea house. She carried the infant and a war axe in either hand. Intrigued, the two abandoned their conversation with Musun and followed. 

“And put some wine in it!” the woman was demanding of Jinta, who was sharing the same skin of goatsmilk. The baby was suddenly asleep, before she even supped. Teary Lura, the mother, returned to her own home. Dungan and Salome asked after Iba, and were told that she was too brave for her own good, cut wood and bamboo alone in the forest. Salome began applying her warpaints. Dungan ate some nuts to pet himself up. The two decided to head up the woodcutter’s path; it seemed a little safer than the route of the kidnapped goat.

Black and white monkeys chirruped in the canopy, not even noticing the two humans on the path, whose eyes were drawn to the contrast against the foliage. Suddenly, a dark shape crossed the gap in the trees, accompanied by a mournful squeaking. As they stared at the sky, the two adventurers then saw the form again, climbing in the air along the cliff, and then out of sight over the jangal at the top. It had indeed looked like a man-sized bat.

At the bamboo grove, further down the path, much of the cane had been cut, a small bundle freshly so, the length of a man’s leg. Salome removed one piece and stowed it in her pack. There was no sound of chopping, no response to their calls, only the low cooing of the wind. They marched on.

A rain squall suddenly began dumping water on the two, drenching whatever parts of their clothes that were not already dripping with sweat. A large, lightly-colored form was coming up the path through the downpour! It was ourang-outang, white of fur, striding on its feet. A necklace sparkled from amidst its pale hair.

Each side paused their forward progress.

The ape suddenly spoke, the Naruan tongue, in the accent of the civilized and educated. It inquired as to what the two were doing in the forest, and was evasive about its own mission. Dungen answered that they were following the woodcutter, and the ourang-outang asked what they knew about roaches in academic language. Salome showed the primate the barb in her possession and asked after a giant flying bat. Munta, the scholar, asked if she was sure she hadn’t confused it with a flock of swifts, as the birds were numerous here. He rambled on about a guano pile the height of a house, and insects. He didn’t seem to trust the adventurers’ intellectual capacity, and suddenly found reason to turn around and head back down the path.

Salome tried to recall what she knew about sophisticated monkeys or apes. She had heard that some created the mischief of homonculus wine, which allegedly made the drinker vomit up a mouse-sized version of themself. Stupid monkeys. The path led to a tunnel through the cliff, which the ourang-outang had already entered, now a silhouette against the light coming from the far side, sparkling as though there was a watery surface beyond. It was late afternoon.

“I do not trust this haughty animal,” Salome said, as she ignited a torch from her pack.

“Do you smell that? Smells like benzoin,” Dungan said.

The tunnel had a small side passage, curving before the edge of the torchlight. That was the source of the vanilla incense odor. The two heard splashing down where the ape had disappeared, and decided not to be distracted by branching routes. A pile of clothes and a machete lay upon a boulder on the shore of the glittering pool at the end of the tunnel: the ciffs were shaped in a circle, at their base in the middle, Quiet Lake.

“Dungan, avert your eyes!” Salome barked.

Iba was naked in the water, and appeared to be making love to a column of the liquid, orange fish swirling inside. She yelped on hearing the voice, and dove underneath the surface. When the woodcuttress emerged sheepishly to claim her clothes and blade, she seemed angry and responded monosyllabicly.

“What were you doing in the water?!”

“Peace. Found peace.”

“Strange way to find peace.”

“You’ve spoiled.”

“Hmmm. Maybe I’ll take a dip.”

“The village seemed peaceful.”

“Ha. Old fools. Cruel as all small villages,” the large, homely woman uttered, grimacing. She set off for the tunnel, presumably to head back home. 

“Dungan, avert your eyes!” Salome stripped and got in. It wasn’t fully peaceful, as the birds that nested in the cliffs above were creating a racket. White streaks dripped down the escarpment toward a beach choked with foliage. A small path seemed to lead there from the boulder landing. The water was cooler than expected, pleasant and clear. Salome dove under the surface and opened her eyes. Golden and orange fish were numerous, as was vegetative detritus, but nothing odd.

When Salome was back on shore, and dressed, the two adventurers decided to return to the village. They did not search for the ourang-outang or investigate the scented side-passage. A strong breeze blew back on the path outside the cliffs, exposing a brightly-colored snake in the foliage next to the path. Dungan could see that it would take twenty minutes to cut through the undergrowth to avoid the serpent. He jabbed the dirt near it with his staff, and the reptile slithered away into the thicket. Iba had apparently retrieved the bundle of bamboo that she had made at the harvesting grove.

When the travelers had almost reached the village the wind gusted again, revealing a roach standing on its back legs, its head even with their bellies. The adventurers acted quickly, too quickly, Salome slicing into vines with her chakram, and Dungan clobbering the ground with his staff. The roach chirped, in Naruan like the ape, “Are you good to eat?” and swung its two little knives, catching Salome on the arm, its little barbs adding scratches beside the small cut. She swung back furiously, taking off two of its limbs (it was already missing one), and it fell to the ground. The forelegs kept twitching even though it was dead. 

“A talking giant roach!”

“With civilized weapons!”

“We should drag it back to the village … and charge people to see it!”

Each took a roach-knife, fashioned from some sort of chitin. Definitely not a good fit for human hands. They hefted the body between them, since it was pretty light, and set off for the settlement.

“Ah! Don’t bring that horrible thing in here! Throw it in the river!” Jinta screamed when they arrived at the tea-house fence.

“Keep that away from my goats!” Ghikri yelled.

“We think it’s what kidnapped your kid.”

“I don’t care!” growled the old man, clutching his hand.

They carried the dead roach to the river and tossed it in the water, bidding the strange creature good-bye. After some reassurance, Jinta let them sleep on the ground under her eaves, following a meal of some tasteless gruel. 

As Salome was applying her ochres in the morning, the tea house was beset by a number of distressed villagers. Lura, tears streaming from her face, clutched her baby. The infant was no longer crying, its eyes had turned black, and it was grunting “Odoyoqodoyoqodoyoqodoyoqodoyoq” in a horrible, low voice. A boy came up from the riverbank shouting, “Musun’s boat is gone, and her beads are spilled everywhere!” Ghikri arrived last, his hand dripping pus, “My billy-goat has burst and is now swarmed with roaches!”

Session 19, “Skirmish Paints”

Suroga looked again. The threshold of the cave shimmered–Saartu, Marasmius, Ovid–they were there … and then they weren’t … and then only Saartu … and then, just Suroga. The world had shifted as it had during the earthquake, shifting between places in a way that hurt the barbarian’s head. Had the other Inklings abandoned the cave, marched down the shore toward the village the acolytes had spoken of? ... Had this foul magic made him disappear in their eyes? The Jurka set off, dawnwards along the shore, away from the cursed cove.

* * *

The next morning, a tendril of smoke rising out of the jangal told Suroga that his journey was almost over, mucking through the faint path up the river. There were canoes on the shore ahead. The barbarian absently noted a bit of churn in the sand, presuming a recent launch. He heard animated conversation in the distance, in a language unfamiliar … unless it was that practiced by the acolytes back in the cave of the Saint and Angel.

The talk was coming from what appeared to be a wall-less restaurant, a roof over tables where an old villager berated those gathered, where a boy was yelling and gesturing, where a mother holding an infant sobbed, and a monotone nonsense repeated. The man holding a steaming vase seemed to be the proprietor, and at the heart of all this were an armed man and woman, the latter definitely not from here at all: ochres painted her skin not too dissimilar from what some of his people wore. Suddenly each and every one of them were staring at Suroga. Awkwardness hung in the air, punctuated by the buzz of forest insects, the chatter of monkeys, and that awful–oh, it was the baby saying it:

“Odoyoqodoyoqodoyoqodoyoq–”

“Do you speak Coinish?” the woman asked, in an accent Suroga couldn’t place.

“Ah, yes.”

“Then we might converse … who are you?”

“I am an itinerant performer … where am I?”

“At Jinta’s tea house, in the village by the Quiet Lake. Please, have a cup, my treat! Jinta, your best tea, please!”

“I have only one tea.”

“Then it must be the best tea.”

“Do you take goatsmilk in yours?” the woman asked.

“Yes, of course,” said the son of the steppes.

The woman spoke in the local language, presumably ordering the addition of goatsmilk. The cranky old man screamed something, chewed at his thumb, and stormed away. It appeared there was to be no additive to Suroga’s drink.

“Odoyoqodoyoqodoyoqodoyoq–”

Suroga glanced at the black-eyed infant, “Um … have you seen a fellow in … darkened metal armor?”

“Alive? No, we have seen many strange things here near the Lake–a scholarly ourang-outang, a man-bat, a boy-sized roach, sex water–but not that.” 

“Maybe I outpaced them … somehow … wait, what? Sex water?!” 

The man with the staff spoke, “It’s a two hour walk from here. Salome knows more about it.”

“I only got in the water, Dungan. It was pleasant. Where do you hail from, stranger?”

“I come from the land of the Iron Horde.”

“Ah, do you have any tobacco?”

“Not any more.”

“I also lost my foul-smelling herbs. But not my nicely-scented ones.”

“You are spice merchants?”

“Indeed.”

“Traveling with a skull-headed mace and a sharp disk of steel?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

After he had fled the Horde, Suroga had developed a bit of a taste for the spicier foods in the cities along the Inner Sea. Salome just happened to be selling a small vial of peppercorns for sixty coin. Suroga negotiated the price down to fify silvers. 

“This has been a very profitable exchange,” the merchantress said.

Suroga began plotting to sell his prize to a bigger fool.

The baby had finally stopped rambling with its possessed voice. The boy, however, remained agitated. Dungan translated for Suroga. The kid claimed tha the village’s protectress had been abducted down on the riverbank, her bead charms scattered there. The kid ran off to check this Musun’s hut, and returned to say that indeed she was gone. Dugnan laid out the options. 

“Well, I’m not sure how this is profitable to us, but we could try to look for Musun. Or we could follow the blood trail of the kid–goat kid–into the forest. Or go back to the Quiet Lake with the sex water. Or leave. Are you joining us … Soo-roh-gah?”

“Well, Doon-yan, it couldn’t hurt to leave word here at the tea house, while we track down this missing person–in case my missing compatriots stop by...”

Salome was reapplying her ochres.

“I knew some people who wore those to war,” Suroga said.

“These are more skirmish paints,” the woman replied.

At the shore it was clear that a struggle had happened, with gouged sand and scattered beads. Salome took a necklace dangling off a branch along the path upriver and placed it on herself. There were broken twigs and a human footprint and other spiky impressions here and there. The group moved upstream, following the signs of the abduction.

An anomaly on the riverbank meant that water regularly spilled into a channel leading into the woods. It ran downhill and into a cave. The trackers moved away from the river. More signs of Musun’s abduction were located at the cavemouth, as well as a host of unpleasant large animal turds.

“Reminds me of a rodent,” Suroga said, remembering the sewers of the City of Thieves.

“A bat is a rodent,” said Dungan, scanning the sky through the crack in the foliage.

“Really?”

The would-be-rescuers stood and listened. Over the burble of the river and shrieking of the forest katy-dids, a strange sussuration could be heard coming from underground. Suroga lit a torch, and the party ducked into the wet cave, where they had to crouch to stand. A few turds floated there. The cave was dry beyond … but the wall moved, sparkled, buzzed.

It was thousands, if not tens of thousands of roaches carpeting the walls and ceilings. When one began flapping its wings an undulation would follow, as each neighbor joined in. Suroga did not like this one bit.

“But where do the big shits come from?”

“The big roaches, like the one we fought.”

The roaches on the ceiling parted for the flame as the party passed underneath. The others scuttled like sparkling waves in a disgusting tidal lagoon. But the searchers got beyond them. The passage opened into a chamber that stunk, a nauseating tang. On the far end was a crack in the wall. Yes, they could squeeze through it, but it would be slow going. A human’s slipper, like those worn by the villagers lay at the entrance to the crevice, as did several scraped off chitinous scales and insect legs. Insect legs the length of a man’s arm.

“Man was not meant to go into caves."

The woman pushed through the crack at the front, Suroga came with the torch behind. As Salome progressed, the wall got sticky and the smell got worse. She pushed down her gorge and pushed through to an open space. A strange scene greeted her and the others, when they emerged, gagging but not uncomposed.

A single roach, the size of a child, was rubbing a stick coated with black gunk onto the cave walls. It inserted the tool into one of its own secretious glands, and resumed “painting” the rocks. When it realized there was a light source, it turned and faced the intruders.

“Who are you? Where are you from?” it said, in passable Naruan, which Suroga did not understand. The Jurka was quite sure now that this was whom the big turds came from, though.

“Who am I? Where am I from?” the bug continued, not really waiting for answers, though it seemed to shiver when Salome mentioned the Quiet Lake.

“You see, when a mother roach, and a father roach love each other…”

“Mother.” the roach stated.

“Who is your mother?” Salome asked.

“Maa Blaat. Maa Blaat,” the roach chirrupped with something approaching awe.

“Take us to her please,” Salome asked, and then explained to Suroga what they were doing in Coinish.

The torch revealed a series of crude black-goo illustrations, each dominated by what looked like a child’s drawing of a centipede. Surrounding this symbol looked like a host of tiny roaches. Some of these illustrations were on the ceiling, some the walls, and some the floor, repetitious in a way that might indicate the telling of a story. There was a passage heading up to the left but the artist-roach directed opposite, into a very twisty rock passage. 

The sound of shrieking echoed from that passage, and suddenly a filthy, haggard woman burst into view, feeling her way along the walls, screaming. She recoiled at the torchlight, and a number of roaches swarmed her from behind, nibbling at her heels in what almost seemed like a playful fashion, if it hadn’t been for the terror on her face.

The merchants and the musician shockingly leapt into action like a well-oiled machine, interposing themselves between the woman’s body and her aggressors. The roaches, carrying odd little pole-arms, struck out at the victim’s defenders. In a matter of moments the four captor roaches were dead and dismembered, although after the first blush of lucky strikes, the cave-fighting’s awkwardness caught up to the adventurers: the low ceiling knocked Dugnan’s staff from his hands and Salome fumbled her chakram on her backswing. 

The first complication was that the artist decided to join the fray, puncturing the woman with the point of his painting stick, globbing her with the black goop. She survived the strike, however, and the roach did not last through the retaliation. The second complication was that the struggle had alerted some guard force deeper in the tunnels. Everyone ran for the tight passage except for Dugnan, who moved to retrieve his staff. Salome wriggled through to the other side, and darkness. Suroga and the woman got wedged momentarily, but this was fortunate, as Dugnan could at least still see.

The several arriving roaches got in a few licks on the barbarian sorcerer as he knelt to grab his weapon, and a few more blows landed as he jammed himself into the sticky crack. The party and woman fled past the roach curtain, through the dank pool, and back out into the sunlight. The big roaches did not follow.

All were dazzled by the sun as they staggered along the runnel toward the river. They did not stop until they got to the village. Salome noticed that the woman had no shoes at all. Dugnan noticed that she was not Musun. Suroga noticed that she had gills tattooed on her grubby neck. It turned out her name was Ran wa Ran, and she was from a village upstream, that of the Gleaming Fins.

“Why did you rescue the wrong person!” the boy yelled as they arrived at the tea house.

“Feel free to try yourself, kid!” Salome was irritated.

“Look, you people have a nest of big cockroaches on your doorstep!”

“With all this ungratefulness, maybe we leave this village to its fate.”

“Jinta, do you have a healer here?” Dugnan asked. He did not like at all the squirming he felt in his cuts, nor was he happy about the festering blackness on the woman’s stab wound.

“Galak Deng. Lives at the base of the cliff up the middle path. I don’t trust his skills, though. What kind of healer has bad skin, bad breath, and a throat full of phlegm?”

Despite this unpromising description, the group headed up the trail to Galak Deng’s shack. They saw another (the same?) brightly-colored, poisonous snake coiled around a tree, which did not seem the most positive portent, either. The hut was covered with paper charms, soggy from the recent rains. An old man hobbled out, apparently happy to have visitors. He was perhaps even more repulsive than Jinta had described, and gargled when he spoke, which made it even hard for those who understood Naruan to comprehend.

Galak Deng distributed paper charms to each, and asked what was the matter. He seemed unfazed by the description of roach attacks. He pulled out a thin reed and inserted it, painfully, up Dugnan’s nostril, and peered into the exposed end.

“Uh-huh. Brain worms,” the healer pronounced. “Take this.”

Dugnan immediately drank the tincture offered.

The old man prodded Ran wa Ran’s bites. “Mmmmm. Eggs. … Eat these.”

Dungan had a weird vision of a woman he didn’t know, who reminded him of his tribesfolk, her pregnant stomach close to bursting.

“Do not vist the Quiet Lake,” Galak Deng counseled. “It is sacred. Not evil … but not inclined to involve itself in … our troubles. Now, go and be safe with my protections.”

“What will they protect us from, spirits?”

“A … very small number … of spirits.”

* * *

 

The merchants and the minstrel, with Ran wa Ran rested at Ginta’s, again. What were they to do about the roaches’ nest, or man-bat, if anything? Would it be wise to wait on Suroga’s missing mates, Marasmius, Ovid, and Saartu? Should they return to the Quiet Lake, despite the healer’s admonition? Would they help Ran wa Ran return to her village?

The Gleaming Fin woman absently scratched at her bites. She talked of her village, where the incense of dreaming agaru was harvested. She told of the old ruins of the Monkey Empire up the river. She shuddered, and spoke of “The Bachelor,” the great white crocodile that had hunted there for as long as anyone alive remembered. 

“The Bachelor can wear human shapes,” Ran wa Ran said, portentously, staring at Suroga, Dungan, and Salome in turn. “He could be anyone … even you.”

Session 20: “Rescued: Another Skull, a Baby, and an Old Woman”

As they lay on the rushes under the thatch pavilion, it was difficult to sleep. Salome had eaten too many areca nuts and was curled into a ball, sweating. Dungan was irritated about the pepper sale to the foreign barbarian that seemed to have diminished rather than expanded their collective wealth. Suroga himself worried that he had been whisked far away from where he had been … or even when he had been. Maybe his companions, Marasmius, Saartu, and Ovid weren’t coming. He had known two of them since the City of Thieves. Ran wa Ran scratched and moaned, suspicious of all. A shriek pierced the dark sky, waking any not on watch, a dark shadow sliding across the village.

“Man-bat!”

“Bah, he’s no crocodile,” Ran scoffed.

“Yeah, but he can take to the air.”

“He’s no Bachelor,” the Finwoman repeated through gritted teeth.

The whole village returned to an uneasy slumber, and when dawn came, Jinta served the sojourners a gummy, tasteless gruel, plus tree fruit that was delicious, if a tad overripe. A discussion over the next steps took place. Finding new goods was an order of business, as was a place to sell them. This village by Quiet Lake would never be a traveling merchant’s target destination, with or without a roach problem. Ran wa Ran spoke of upriver. The Gleaming Fins’ village had enough people to have an economy, even the Hundred Taikuns sent ships there. Beyond that, by water buffalo, was the Valley of Shrines, with the College of a Thousand Paths, the Boulder School and all the others, and the Spider Mountain Temple, and all the folks that that entailed. Ran was anxious to get home, back to her fishing. She scratched at her gill tattoos and the bites on her legs, which were leaking pus. 

“I don’t particularly want to return to the roach nest,” Suroga declared.

“We could investigate the incense tunnel by the lake, see if your missing companions went there...”

“Didn’t the healer tell us not to visit there?”

Dungan shrugged.

Galak Deng’s warning notwithstanding, Dungan and Suroga ventured up the path toward the lake. Near the bamboo grove, a katydid began buzzing from a trunk, “Odoyoqodoyoqodoyoq.” Was this witchcraft? Suroga wondered, and then he saw the pair of flying roaches. He wasn’t surprised by their arrival, just by fighting buzzing airborne giant insects with tiny polearms, and his knife tumbled into undergrowth. Dungan bashed one into the ground with his staff, and then Suroga punched one in the neck, cracking the exoskeletal joints between the head and the thorax. “No-One-At-All” felt the gods’ harsh eyes on him. Dungan handed the Jurka back his dagger.

Before they reached the tunnel through the cliff, another disturbance roiled the canopy. The man-bat flashed across the gap in the jangal, pursued by two more flying roaches. Dungan began to recite his magic words, but then refrained, after considering the roaches’ weakness, and the man-bat’s unclear allegiance. The chase went out of sight, until the adventurers could see the man-bat flapping to gain altitude toward the clifftop. The roaches peeled off to the side, spotted the two humans, and swooped toward them. The fight was over as quickly as it had begun, although one roach’s weapons had scuffed Dungan’s skin. Before it had died it asked, in a tiny voice, “Did that hurt?” Suroga felt a weird appreciation for the little beast, even though he had just killed a pair.

“I only have a … couple torches,” Suroga accounted, looking into the tunnel to the lake.

“You punched through a cockroach’s face and … have a certain desperation about you. Let me carry the light.”

“I got it. My knife only takes one hand. You’re good with that staff.”

The smell of incense was diminished since the last time Dungan was here. The lake sparkled at the far end of the crosscut. They would check that out in a moment. The side passage opened up into a pocket with a surprisingly large carved tableau. A woman with disappointment and love on her face had buried a spear into a looming demon’s heart. Black charrings indicated where someone had burned the benzoin earlier.

“This is a beautiful love story,” Dungan commented, “Probably the one that goat herder told us about.”

Behind the statues a passage corkscrewed downward. The adventurers squeezed themselves into the hole. It got wetter and wetter as they descended, opening into cavities here and there. It did not seem like anyone other than themselves had been through this place in some time. In one hollow there was a glint in the muck. A cautious approach revealed that it was a bird skull first silvered and then painted black. Much of the black had been scratched and chipped away, showing the precious metal.

“I’ve encountered a bird skull in a cave before that brought strange circumstances before … I’m wary of touching it …”

“Could help us find your missing friends …”

“They’ve not been down here, though. I’m beginning to think I’ll never see them again. This stinks of sorcery … although we are beneath a sacred place.”

“This is exactly what I was coming down here for.”

“I think the demon is perhaps imprisoned under this place … if we disturb the sex water …”

The skull was flipped with the staff. In place of a neck it had a small, fused, non-bony rod that ended in a point. It was dared to place the item in a belt pouch, and descend further, toward the sound of moving and raining water. The path ended with a drop off onto a slick stone about twenty feet below, where moisture rained down, and trickled into a rushing subterranean river. It seemed not safe at all, so the two retreated to the surface and the lake.

The interior cliffs looked a little easier to scale than the exterior. To the right, high up, birds squawked and shat, above a forest-choked beach. Light danced languidly off the still water. A faint path went right along this landing into the water. Fairly sure the missing Inklings had not ended up here, the explorers decided to return to the village without wading into the lake, even though Salome had done so safely. 

Down the path, just the other side of the bamboo grove, another (the same?) insect began to buzz, “Odoyoqodoyoqodoyoq.” Sure enough flying roaches glided onto the scene. Sure enough Dungan was jabbed. Sure enough the insect duo were smacked down by staff and steel. Two fled, however, one asking as it flitted crazily back into the canopy, “How come some creatures have wings?”

“Should we kill that chirping bug? What are the chances it’s helping us?”

“Maybe leave it be, it’s warned us twice. I think. You know, that seemed to be the same noise that the baby was making when I arrived in this village.”

When they got back to the village this time, there was a commotion. Several people were holding Lura, who sobbed and seemed to be trying to charge into the forest. She held an axe with streamers in one hand and screamed for her child. Dungan and Suroga learned that she had taken down three roaches, but in the meanwhile others had spirited off with her infant.

Although he was from a society that had little use for elaborate mechanisms of state, Suroga asked what sort of local lord might be called in to help rectify the roach nest and kidnapping problem. He was told that the villagers were here because they jealously guarded their personal freedoms, that they did not want to be beholden to the support of parasitic elites. Suroga sighed, stating that if there was one good thing that taxes were for was an organized defense against giant roach raids.

A small rescue party was formed. Ghikri, weak of leg and swollen of thumb, begged off, even though one of his livestock was the victim here. Ran wa Ran determined it wasn’t her fight, and besides she was too itchy to be of use. Salome just groaned from the reeds on the ground. Lura wept quietly and sharpened her war-axe. Iba volunteered her machete and brawn, blushing when Dungan brought up witnessing the latter quite clearly at the lake. Iba showed them Musun’s necklace, which she swore had appeared hanging on her window this morning.

Suroga did not want to do it, but he brought out the crystal sphere that he had hadn’t touched since the one time he’d suffered its visions of his former mistress. “You know the baby … a little better than I do,” he said as he handed it to Dungan. The sorcerer accepted his relative expertise and risked his mind by placing his hands on the device and thinking of the little black-eyed infant. She was there in his mind, in darkness but lit by a dull red glow. Alive. The child screeched in the arms of Musun, filthy and nude, dried tear streaks down her face. “They’re both alive,” Dungan whispered. The ball glowed, begging to be used again, but he put it back in its sack.

The third path out of the village led to “horsehead cave” at the base of the cliff. Here, too, the bluff could be climbed. Bright blue butterflies flew up in reaction to a sprinkle of rain. The path was scratched up here and there. Some stick-shaped thing lay on the path, completely swarmed with ants. Scraping it revealed the meat and bone of a kid’s leg–the goat kind, not human. The grotto issued a warm breath that smelled of spoiled almond milk. A few large turds were scattered there.

The four would-be-rescuers, Dugnan, Suroga, Iba, and Lura, pushed into the cave, and before long were confronted with a dripping room choked with stalactites and stalagmites, and filled with piles of wet eggs. Suddenly, Dungan was sprinting away, bringing down his club to crush the head of a sleeping adult. It did not even get the chance to ask a question. “We can always smash these later.” Some of the larvae in the melon-sized eggs wriggled their pale, half-formed legs and wings. 

The war party moved into a tunnel that had been recently dug through the back of the horsehead chamber. Dirt trickled down the walls and they had to crouch. When it opened back into a rocky cavern, the first roaches spotted were slow to react to the light, being back to back and copulating. Disgusted by vermin coitus, not to mention their kidnapping ways, the humans charged in–across a chitinous, crunchy floor. The mating bugs were easily killed, but others came out of the dark, homing in on Dungan, naturally.

The first group of pests was defeated, but more could be heard coming, not crunching, but on the ceiling. The intruders retreated to the more defensible room entrance, as there were bound to be a lot of roaches. The second, third, and fourth waves were repulsed as well, only at a small cost of human blood, as well as the price of curious roach questions. 

A reddish light could be seen in the distance, and the party crunched their way there, ignoring the passages to the left and right. Musun called out in desperate hope, her voice hitching, The baby caterwauled. The captives were on the other side of a crevasse that apparently masses of roaches had borne the people to along the walls. Large stone pots steamed over there, with roach pieces and stirrers inside. Suroga threw a rope to Musun, had her tie it to the rock cauldron, and went hand over hand, pulling his feet behind, as the other three held the other end of the rope taut. He put baby Ika in his rucksack, fastened its loops securely, and clambered back across. Naked Musun followed suit, and when she reached safety, Iba placed her beads back over her head. It was as though she was fully dressed again. Lura dropped her axe and clutched her baby like she would never let her go again.

* * *

The eggs were left alone during the retreat, as they had two defenseless people in tow now, and Dungan’s many wounds, besides. He probably had almond-milk lung, brainworms, and hives by this point. Despite their haggard appearance, the rescuers were welcomed into the village as heroes, no disparagement this time. Even Suroga felt proud with this victory in a sea of setbacks.

Session 21: “Scattering from Roaches” 

Suroga sprinted off toward the river; maybe he had spotted his erstwhile mates, maybe it was a characteristic of his people to detach periodically from their social group, or maybe he’d had enough of roaches or Dungan and Salome. The latter had recovered from her overindulgence in time to welcome home the triumphant rescue mission, while the former was troubled by the extra scratches that conflict with the giant roaches had marked on his skin. Ran wa Ran, the first rescued, was in a much worse condition now, for she had scraped her legs to bloody ribbons with her fingernails. This inspired Dungan to suggest a trip back to the healer, Galak. They would have just enough light to get there and back before sunset.

About halfway up the path, the two adventurers heard the bleat of goats. It looked like a pair of Ghikri’s animals had gotten out and wandered up this way. Dungan stood quietly and observed and listened, and realized he saw white fur in the undergrowth. The pale ourang-outang was apparently spying on these two creatures. Salome yelled out to this Munta.

“Ah, the one who loves leeches,” the ape-scholar responded, with disdain, “I can tell by your appearance that you are of the womanly sex of humans.”

He claimed that one of his assistants, Grippa, had noticed increasing activity of roaches outside the toroidal cliff, and that he was chasing down that lead. Salome pointed out that maybe the lake itself repelled the insects, and that seemed to agitate Munta. He muttered about guano. Although he seemed not to trust the intellect of the humans, he was suddenly excited to return to his studies inside the swift cave by the lake.

“Would you like some goatsmilk, before you go? I was just about to help myself to some.”

“Drink another animal’s milk, woman?! From the breasts of a creature that is not an ape?! That is akin to beastiality, and disgusting!”

He brachiated away, far more quickly than the humans could have ever traveled through the jangal, apparently back to his research. Salome helped herself to the nanny goat’s teats, assuring Dungan that Ghikri would not notice. The two secured the livestock to some vines and moved on after the woman had consumed her warm beverage.

In the shadow of the great bluff, Galak was glad to see the pair again. He poked at Dungan’s wounds and declared the man would soon be beset by hives and itching. “The roaches will be able to smell you,” the healer warned, and gave Dungan a foul-tasting nostrum, which he chugged immediately.

It was almost dark when they got back to the goats, but they noticed a few jangal roaches as long as a thumb scampering through the animals’ fur. Salome scraped the insects away with her chakram. The two couldn’t help but notice the forest litter twitching here and there as roaches crept along the ground, in larger numbers than seen before.

“I don’t think this village has much longer.”

The corral’s gate was open back at Ghikri’s. Some of the remaining flock still huddled inside and bleated pathetically. Ghikri did not seem to be home. Roaches, however, clambered through the home’s thatch, with enough mass that they were visible at dusk. Salome and Dungan hurried to the tea house. Jinta was outside, stepping on roaches there, grimacing.

“Do you rely on Ghikri’s goats, Jinta?”

“We use the milk, yes. Occasionally he will kill one of the billies or old ones for feast meat. This morning, all he was doing was moaning about his hand.”

“We should really check on him.”

Several villagers gathered and brought torches back to Ghikri’s place. Salome called out, “Are you in there, you smelly goat herder?” When no response issued forth, she needlessly kicked open the bamboo door with no latch. The torchlight revealed a carpet of insects atop the crumpled corpse of the old man, one hand aloft in ruin. 

“Let’s set fire to this place,” the foreigners suggested, and the villagers of Quiet Lake did so with gusto, culling the goats as well, food loss be damned. The odor of the smoke, meat and exoskeleton, made stomachs grumble and gorges rise at the same time.

“We need to check on Ran wa Ran.”

Salome placed some cheesecloth borrowed from Jinta on the woman’s swollen calves. Something was moving around inside there. She insisted that she needed to be delivered back to her village, where real healers resided. “Auntie” or the herbalists would surely know what to do, four days upriver. The fisherwoman’s gill tattoos on her neck flexed as she swallowed nervously. Salome and Dungan moved away to have a private discussion.

“I know it’s dark, but I think we have to kill her tonight. She’s not going to survive and we don’t want the contagion to spread.”

“Throw her body in the river … let the current take away the infestation.”

“Hey, Musun, what do you think of abandoning Quiet Lake, going upriver to the Fins’ village?”

Musun spat a little. In a loud voice, she told how she had been there, selling her beads, which she no longer wore except for her necklace. Salome remembered something and pulled out the bracelet she had retrieved from the riverbank. The peddler smiled and took the charm but did not put it back on.

“THERE IS THE MATTER OF THE BACHELOR, THE GREAT ALBINO CROCODILE SWIMMING THOSE WATERS!”

“Why do they call it ‘The Bachelor’?”

“IT IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE RIVER, EATING ALL THE OTHERS. THE CHIEF TRIED TO KILL IT, BUT THEN THE EARTH SHOOK.”

“Huh. We remember an earthquake, not too long ago.” (It was a shame Suroga was not here, for he might have recalled his own experience with recent seismic activity.)

“Jinta, do you know much about the Gleaming Fins’ home?”

“It is near the ruins of the Monkey Empire. Plunderers sometimes stop at the tea house on their way there. They never come back.”

“No one ever comes back??”

“Well, Musun has. And the company ships of the Hundred Taikuns return down the river, bringing back their pepper and agaru. Maybe the company men don’t go into the ruins. Maybe it’s their firelances that keeps them safe.”

“That sounds too dangerous and too far. We need to evacuate now, the roaches are going to overrun this place tonight, probably.”

“We could retreat to the lake, like the monkey said, it keeps out roaches. Maybe we tell everybody it’s the bird poop that does it–that’s less spooky than the spirits.”

The two adventurers, erstwhile merchants, but now rescuers and leaders, dare we even say heroes, presented the idea of the lake retreat to the rest of the villagers. Some were opposed, because they were scared, especially to travel through the forest at night. After all, the jangal sometimes vomited out armies of ants or beetles, this roach thing wasn’t that unusual.

Iba was not afraid of the lake, quite the opposite, in fact. She joined with the relocaters. Lura and Musun now trusted the outsiders, and they, too, grabbed supplies (and baby Ika) to make the journey. A few others saw wisdom in the withdrawal, and joined the column leaving up the forest path. Ran wa Ran, with scant connection to the village itself, came along as well.

A pair of gliding roaches emerged suddenly from the canopy. Dungan yelled out nonsensical words and one of them tumbled to the earth, dropping its tiny polearm and crunching softly against the soil. Salome yelled for everyone to get behind her, but Lura just shifted her baby’s sling to her back, and sheared off the other one’s legs and wings with one slice of her war axe. Salome sheepishly stomped the head off the downed one as it queried, “Why am I so weak?”

The villagers, excepting Iba, were trepidatious about entering the tunnel to the lake, but they already had torches for the night march, so the transition to underground was not really interrupted. However, when they got to the side passage to the demon and woman statues, Ran wa Ran began screaming. Roaches began erupting from her legs, fleeing back toward the forest. Everyone else shrieked and fled toward the lake. Salome and Dungan just watched the Fin woman bleed out on the floor of the cave; there was nothing they could do.

After all the day’s horrors, the Quiet Lake’s shore was a relief, although the lack of much noise beyond gentle lapping made it a bit unnerving. The watches did not see anything at night, not even the swifts or any dark shadows. Dungan, however, awoke in a weird state. He couldn’t feel anything. Physically.

“PERHAPS YOU HAVE BEEN LEECHED,” Musun suggested.

“Perhaps you will have advantage in battle.”

“Let us get to the ourang-outang’s cave, he said it’s through the water, under the nesting birds.”

Iba, looking around nervously, joined the small detachment away from the shore camp. It was weird walking through the water without feeling it, and Dungan fumbled his staff in his hands. The water from the lake suddenly rose up and enveloped Iba’s lower half, then quickly sank back to its level.

“Iba, I don’t think you have to worry about Salome taking your … friend.”

For the first time in the outlanders’ presence, Iba smiled. Broadly.

The cave beneath the birds was noisy in the morning, smelled of compost and rotting wood, and red torchlight could be seen inside. When they stepped into the darkness with their own torches, the adventurers realized that the floor was … moving. Pillbugs, beetles, scorpions, and spiders swarmed over one another in constant movement, feasting on the pounds birdshit dropped from a hundred feet above. 

The ourang-outang appeared to be transferring liquids from jar to jar. A huge packsnail, large enough to mount a howdah filled with luggage, sat near the researcher. The insects parted in front of smoky fire, and Salome and Dungan crept toward the ape. It twisted to look at them.

“Maybe it’s the spirits in the water that repulse the roaches … or maybe, per my original theory, the swift dung drops into the water with enough volume to keep them out. Anyway, they are afraid of this liquid.”

“Do you think, with your great knowledge, you could cure my loss of feeling?”

Munta made some noncommittal noise.

“We think the village is already doomed, except those who we brought with us.”

“Of course it’s doomed. The Roach God is relentless.”