The Bachelor

The fifth phase of Yirith: Age of Low Adventure

Sessions 22-

SPOILERS for "Lorn Song of the Bachelor." 3000 words.

(You might want to compare IsaacIsAfraid's concurrent play reports.)

Session 22: "Sounding Out the Gleaming Fins"

The next morning, a day’s row upriver, Dungan could not smell anything, even though the riverbank stank for everyone else. He could feel his body, though. Salome remarked that she had heard river eels were delicious, and hoped to snare some for one of the day’s meals. Monkeys screamed, birds chittered, insects swarmed. One of the children sobbed. 

On the second and third days, Dungan was blind. He could smell the rot, hear the jangal cacophony, feel his muscles pull the oars, and taste how the last of Jinta’s gruel was spoiling, but he could not see. It was especially alarming, then, on the third day of the journey, when Salome reported that a boat was trailing them, and gaining. A large boat with many oars and a single sail.

The vessel was almost certainly run by the Hundred Taikuns, the merchant league that dominated the Inner Sea, and reportedly had warehouses in all of the Seven Cities. Dungan, with relative accuracy, blamed them for the destruction of his people’s ways. Salome knew them to be dangerous for independent operators like herself, and had no love for them either. The choice was made to hide the canoes in the mangroves around a bend, and let the company ship pass. 

From between the mangroves the refugees from Quiet Lake watched the Taikuns’ ship pass by. It had a dozen oars and rowers, and another dozen men with staves topped by pottery, smoke issuing forth from the bulbs, even in the light rain. One of the men aimed this device toward the far shore at a passel of monkeys in the canopy, and a flash, and thunder rolled across the water. One of the monkeys fell from the branches and the others scattered, shrieking. The soldier who had fired the weapon laughed. 

“THEY ARE TRAVELING TO GLEAMING FINS TO GET THE DREAMING AGARU,” Musun said, more noisy than any would have wished.

“Incense-mongers,” growled Salome.

On the fourth day, Dungan felt better. The light rain continued and he was happy to feel it on his skin, see the grey clouds, taste the smoked fish. When Musun told them they were close to the village, the rowers in the three canoes all felt a lift and increased their efforts. The pros and cons of tattoos and skirmish paints were discussed.

“No, really, I feel great now,” Dungan claimed.

“Terminal lucidity,” Salome quipped. 

“We should probably warn the village about the roach situation.”

“And get these Quiet Lakers set up with a home.”

The conversation was cut short by the appearance of a corpse in the river, drifting downstream toward the flotilla. A human, face down and waterlogged seemed to be aimed right at them. Salome grabbed an oar and skillfully used it to flip the body. 

What had seemed to be a corpse spoke as its head came out of the water. “Where am I?” it exclaimed, garbled, water bubbling out of its throat. Somebody shrieked because a fish with whiskers was clamped on the groin of the body. Salome, who had wanted to pull the corpse aboard, swung the paddle hard onto the fish, splattering blood and water everywhere. It opened its mouth, full of hooked teeth, exposing a ruin between the man’s legs, and tried to bite the oar. Salome yanked the paddle back, and the wounded fish dove beneath the water.

“I guess I was hungry,” Salome excused her actions.

“Is that one of the jangal leeches everyone is talking about? Anyway, probably good we didn’t pull that into the boat,” Dungan responded.

“Who would do such a thing? Let’s be more discerning about the fish we catch,” Salome said.

“We wouldn’t want to get catfished.”

The river took a sharp bend to the left. High above was a pointy rock, jutting out over the water. Musun told them she had heard male singers up there on one of her journeys. 

The river bowed back toward the right, making a wide lagoon up ahead. A few huts on stilts marked the curve, a pair of boats tied up, muscular men, wiry and stout, loafing on the piers. Strangely, a rock monument jutted from the center of the waterway, and it was revealed to be crudely but accurately carved into the head of a snarling eel. Salome raised her eyebrows. The men seemed to be expecting something, staring at the Quiet Lake flotilla, but the party just rowed on by. Musun noted they would see the Gleaming Fins’ village any minute now.

The settlement seemed huge after Quiet Lake’s miniscule affair. Dozens of canoes and some larger boats, including the Taikuns’ craft, were tied up to docks and pilings. A long house stood at the top of the hill over dozens and dozens of huts. Small stupas poked out here and there, and sturdy log buildings stood at the far end, where the company ship was.

“So let's warn the chief about the roach situation…”

“...and see if our refugees can make a home here.”

As they tied up, the refugees noticed pilings were carved into scales, fairly recently. A stooped man with knobby hands, sweating even through the drizzle made his way toward them. Like everybody else they could see, he had gills tattooed on his neck. On his sun-browned belly, there appeared to be flaming flowers inked. Dungan approached with all the politeness he could presume.

The man’s name turned out to be Liga si Liga, and he was a pepper farmer. Surprisingly, the old fellow had known Ran wa Ran and was saddened to hear of her death, as well as surprised that walking, talking roaches had played a role in her demise. The farmer told the exiles that they might build their own homes from the bush at the edge of the village here. There was some discussion over Salome and Dugnan’s roles as spice merchants, with Liga si Liga being disappointed that he hadn’t found a new buyer for his crop in the two. Their resources were too limited at the moment. Dugnan asked about the Bachelor, and the peasant said that the crocodile was so cruel that it had buried victims’ remains in pebbles on the riverbank. The chief, though, he had gotten away from the monster … at great cost.

The pair moved toward the chief’s longhouse, assured that they might gain audience. The residence was staffed with half-a-dozen guards outside, blades at their sides, long blowguns in hand. The tattoos on their chests were menacing, sharp: teeth, horns, spikes. They agreed to bring Vartu si Vartu to the front, warned of his fearsomeness.

It was unclear if the heavyset man that showed up had tattoos, for virtually his entire exposed skin was covered in silver paint; equally remarkable was the fact that his left arm was a stump (silvered over). A single servant accompanied the chief, holding an umbrella in one hand and having the other (silvery one) free to dip into a slung pot of paint for reapplication when the chief got smeared.

“WHO ARE YOU, AND WHY DO YOU ENTER MY VILLAGE, HUH?”

Dungan launched into a spiel about the roach threat, but Vartu si Vartu interrupted him. He yelled about the danger of the Bachelor being much worse than some insects, HUH. His two visitors were certainly not brave enough to attack this beast like him, WHO DID THEY THINK THEY WERE TRYING TO SHOW HIM UP, HUH? His belligerence continued, unabated, for some while, before Salome got the nerve up to ask for permission of the Quiet Lakers to settle.

“We… uh, they are but humble refugees.”

“WILL THEY WORK, HUH? WHY ARE YOU HERE?!”

“Um … yes, uh merchants, we are–”

“ARE YOU WORSE THAN THE TAIKUNS’ MEN? WHAT DO YOU BRING TO SELL, HUH?”

“We came to buy … his majesty’s friendship. We want to help your village…”

This gave the chief pause, even though logically pursued, the whole idea might not make that much sense. He pointed to his servant where he had sweated off some silver, and the man dutifully reapplied the paint. 

“THEY ARE CONFUSING ME, QAT! HOW WILL YOU HELP?”

“The crocodile.”

“YOU ARE GOING TO KILL THIS BEAST, SOMETHING VARTU SI VARTU, THE MIGHTIEST CHIEF FOR FIVE DAYS’ TRAVEL, COULD NOT DO?! HE TOOK MY ARM! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

“We have slain monsters–”

“CENTURIES OLD?!”

“Hundreds of … days old. Look, they were tool-users, these roaches … made their own weapons, here look.”

“THAT LOOKS LIKE A SINGLE TOOTH OF THE BACHELOR! HE HAS THOUSANDS!”

“They speak, the roaches, work together, walk on two feet–there are thousands of them, they are a threat … and we killed many. But there are many, many eggs. Which we were unable to destroy. Unfortunately.”

Eventually it was agreed that the adventurer-merchants were allowed to delve into the monkey ruins, where the Bachelor might live. They were told again that no one returns from the rubble of the ancient empire. Dungan was obsequeious once again as they departed the chief’s audience, thanking him for the few small rights that they had gained in Gleaming Fins’ territory.

“Do you smell coffee?’

Dungan breathed in deeply, happy to have his nostrils working. The two wanderers found themselves at a coffee house with two other customers. A muscular older woman wearing a chartreuse skirt covered with a riotous pattern of locusts drank solemnly from a cup. Ink demons cavorted among the criss-crossed patterns that covered her sagging breasts. A middle-aged man with a big nose and a twelve-winged eagle on his chest, tail expanded on his belly pot, was the other occupant. 

The duo spoke with the grim-faced woman, Liga wa Liga, whose eyes were sunken and watery. She wondered aloud why foreign merchants would offer to buy her coffee, but soon was taking an order for a skirt with silver zig-zags, which she said would be perfect with Salome’s complexion. The price was forty coins.

“But it may take a while. I have not woven in a while. A harvest dancer has not possessed my body since my son was taken.”

“The Bachelor?!”

“He was foolish enough to sail to the Old Ruins.”

“Is that where the Bachelor strikes?”

“He strikes anywhere. You are mortals, right? Then don’t go to the ruin.”

“As far as I know … but I have not died yet, so I may be immortal,” Salome said.

“Somehow … I feel like I have come back from death twice,” Dungan spoke, staring at nothing.

“What about this dreaming incense … maybe we could see whether we will die or not in the remains of the Monkey Empire.”

“Well it just so happens that I can sniff that out,” came a raspy voice from behind them.

The man had been eavesdropping. Mira si Mira was his name, and he sold what he harvested deep in the forest at a pittance, he told them. The company was really the only buyer in the area. The party quickly arranged a down payment so that he would harvest them some of the dreaming Agaru. He took the money and ordered the biggest meal on the menu.

“Do you know anything about the Monkey Empire’s ruins … like treasures within?” Dungan was getting worried about their growing debts.

“Oh, it’s loaded with ancient treasure. But. Don’t take any of the monkeys’ trinkets.”

“Why?”

“They cut off their own paws, tied them to strings … and when people got wrapped up in these contraptions, they just disappeared. Never came back. Fucking monkeys.”

“Wait, is that an action or a profanity?”

“A profane utterance. And another thing, people are stupid these days–they allow monkey people to become monks in the Valley of Shrines, not five days’ buffalo ride from here.”

Now that their bellies were full and their pockets were nearly empty, Dugnan and Salome made their way to the edge of the village, where Lura, Musun, and the others were setting up crude lean-tos. During the construction, they regretted having left Iba and her axe-arm back at Quiet Lake. 

* * *

Thunder woke them. Clouds brooded in the sky. Dugnan could not feel the rainfall that was leaking through the leaf roof. They decided to visit the “Auntie” they had heard about, as she might know something about curing the sorcerer’s roach malady. 

A thin, shimmering curtain covered the door to the midwife’s hut, and the sound of recurring whacks came from inside. A tiny woman, as wrinkly as they’d ever seen, crouched next to a cutting board while green fireflies illuminated her work from above. She brought her cleaver down hard, creating another slice of eel to go with the pile she had already created.

“Hi, um, hello,” stuttered Salome, “I was wondering if you were in the business of cures.”

“You’re impotent?!” the woman shrieked, “I didn’t know that was possible!”

“I’m not impotent, it’s my friend who–”

“It’s a coin per dose, it’ll be back to working as normal in a day or two.” She slid one eel slice toward Dungan.

“I’m not impotent, either. I have a caught a disease from a roach. A big roach. Can you cure it?”

Auntie admitted that perhaps the herbalists at the stupas of the Great Mother might have the right concoctions. These oozy eel slices were painkillers, though. Salome bought five and wrapped them in a cloth. The midwife groused about the chief, and answered their questions about the Old Ruins.

“There is death there–it is where the Bachelor lives. Don’t expect to come out of there with your mind whole.”

“I’m not sure mine is whole even now.”

“We’re not sure we’re powerful enough, but we want to go there.”

“Woman! Do you agree to let this man talk for you?! Are you his wife?”

“No, just friends.”

“Ah, working on it. Anyway, I heard a foreigner made a down payment on a wedding skirt,” she winked, barely noticeable through all the wrinkles. “Would be a shame to get lost in the Ruins so close to the nuptials.”

“We shall make a trail to find our way out.”

Auntie laughed. The fireflies above her head arranged themselves in the Monkey constellation. “If you find yourself impotent on your wedding day, you know who to see, ha!”

At the temple, Dugnan ate three crickets, as he was told they “might” heal him, a bug-on-bug remedy. He couldn’t feel the insects crunching between his teeth, but he could certainly hear and taste them. Horrid flavor. He promised donations, should he recover anything from the ruins. Salome received a pod of poisonous beans, with the instructions not to feed them to anything that wasn’t evil. 

As they walked toward the company compound, a crust began to grow on Dungan’s body. He couldn’t feel it, but it was a bit harder to walk. It was not a cure. 

A warehouse, a bunkhouse, an office, and a shisha den comprised the Hundred Taikuns’ outpost here. Non-natives (but Naruan speakers, just a different dialect) stood guard with firelances, and seemed surprisingly welcoming to the two armed individuals that approached. A dizzying smoke issued from the den.

“That may be something we need to hit it up after we take down the Bachelor.”

“Soldier, can we partake of the hookah in there? I may need to calm my nerves right now.”

They were allowed in, and Salome was willing to trade her coin for tokes. As she settled into the cushions, she noticed everything getting sharper in focus. Poor Dugnan couldn’t feel his skin and here her senses were growing keener. Why, she could no doubt hit targets at a distance. If she only had such a weapon. She decided to look into acquiring a blowgun.

Back outside, they watched through a window the chief officer of the company count with his abacus. He was from some distant land, and the first two fingernails on his counting hand had been replaced with or were covered over by jade. 

“You think we’ll ever be that cool someday?”

“No.”

“You know, we could join the company, but I don’t particularly like them.”

“Maybe take them down from the inside?”

“I dunno about that.”

Still high, Salome spent the rest of the day listening, watching, telling stories. She heard people warn about the kingfishers. “Those are the Bachelor’s eyes. He’s always watching.” She learned that when the chief fought the Bachelor, earthquakes had shaken the village. She was informed that the company was trying to use local customs to justify seizing pepper farms. Everyone agreed that the Taikuns had made the village poorer. This informant whispered that many Gleaming Fins had begun to worship the crocodile, and hoped he would eat the company’s ships and men.

The foreigners brought in the curious and desperate. Hearing that the adventurers were headed to the Old Ruin, a knobby-kneed shamaness named Oppu wa Oppu volunteered her assistance. It seemed like she glowed from her star and crescent tattoos. A glaring man, his eyes as intense as the owl tattoo on his chest, offered his spear to an expedition. His name was Wat si Wat and he spoke in a monotone, barely exposing his filed teeth, bragging about how he did not fear the river, or anything in it.

The next morning Dungan could not hear. He could feel the sweltering heat, though, and that his skin was no longer encrusted. Amazingly, shortly after they’d finished their breakfast, Mira si Mira returned with the dreaming agaru. They paid him, nearly emptying their personal treasury, enclosed themselves in a heavy leaf shelter, and burned the incense. The visions that overtook them were intense.

Salome was underground, but the color of her vision was inverted dark things were light and objects normally light, dark she stumbled over pebbles on the floor, heard a woman sobbing for a key she looked at her own dress, changed radically, heard monkeys screaming and cavorting and  blood was running down her arm, found herself walking through a doorway that was a yawning crocodile mouth and led into a pale lake where kingfishers circled in a white sky which filled her vision which then evaporated.

Dugnan felt that he was inside a fine longhouse, silvered fixtures inside he stepped and felt the floor crunch under his feet–a smashed-skull carpet the corners of the room held two impossibly tall stacks of teeth, just teeth it smelled of meat here, and his stomach grumbled even though he saw the mummified remains of a pair of people lay between the toothy columns, a man and woman with a kingfisher atop them, opening its beak, though Dungan could not hear any noise shadows cast from above flickered across his vision, and then he came to.

“Even though we’ve been warned against it a dozen times, I think we must go to the monkey ruins,” Dugnan said.

Salome assented, even though her partner could not hear what she said.

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.

Quiet Lake

The fourth phase of Yirith: Age of Low Adventure

Sessions 18-22

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.”

“Man was not meant to go into caves.”

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.

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.”

Session 22:

“Do we get out and go elsewhere, and take the villagers with us? Do we try and find the bat-man? Should we explore the far side of the lake?”
“Could we bottle and sell the sex water?,” Salome suggested. “We are merchants after all.”
Iba told them tersely that the other side of the lake had no caves on the shore. She also said that she would prefer to stay at the lake.
“That’s understandable, considering …” Dungan let the comment hang, “Are you sure you won’t be lonely?”
Iba gave him a look.
“Okay, and I guess it’s safe from the roaches. Hey, Munta, Iba is staying, and she–”
“I know who she is,” the Ourang-Outang sniffed. “I know what she does.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. Anyway, she’s strong, you could use her to–”
“I have my pack snails for that. And Grippa for refined work.”
Good-byes were said, and every other villager joined the two merchant-warriors in heading back down the path. Corpses and destruction greeted them. Half the tea house was burnt down, Jinta dead beside it. Normal-sized roaches skittered here and there, but not in swarms. The people gathered any roach-free foodstuffs they could, grabbed fishing gear, and made for the boats. They began to row upriver, toward the home of the Gleaming Fins. There would be no third rescue from the roach nest. The numbers were just too imbalanced. The village of the Quiet Lake was conceded to the Roach God.