Mork Borg – Part 3: Eyes and Ash

Read part 1 for a synopsis of the Mork Borg game, this story’s start, and part 2 for dangerous encounters:

Part 1: Murder and Worms – Three from death-row scour the rooms and horrors of the buried den of the addictive Rotblack Sludge.

Part 2: Meat and Statues – The trio meet the ruler of the underground complex.

Rude Awakening

Something twists and strangles.

The passed-out party awakes to bulbous plants using their roots to dig into skin, vines tangling around necks.

After the initial shock, it should be a cakewalk to snap apart weeds. Yet the first attempt fails. And the second! And…

Health falls. Struggling leads to naught as Invisible, the naturally lowest in health of the group, finally reaches zero hit points. He is on the verge of death, unless something, someone can save him.

Bubble Guy, in the nick-of-time, breaks their bonds. With a free action, Bubble Guy Blinks into the side of Invisible’s murderous creature, knocking it off the helpless companion.

Cat then escapes and together Cat and Bubble Guy pulp to mulch the plants most vile.

Getting Invisible awake again, he has a broken arm and is still on the brink of death. Cat stays with Invisible and purrs (a healing factor for others) while Bubble Guy Blinks rapidly through the complex to find… Anything at this point.

Desperation drives action now.

A woman (not Lesdy) is in Fletcher’s ‘workshop,’ the fires burnt out and Bubble Guy leaves unseen. Through the rooms and halls, bodies are where they were left, doors open where left ajar. However, in the grand dining hall, Lesdy and 2 other women are sitting at the massive table there. Bubble Guy is not so lucky this time and is seen before Blinking away.

Lesdy and the women leave down the dark corridor. Bubble Guy, thinking ahead, activates their Bubble power and follows.

Down the spring door Lesdy’s group climbs. Bubble Guy follows but at such haste, falls down the ladder in the dark and one-handed (the other sustaining the Bubble magic).

Bubble Guy suffers only lite damage from the fall. An aid to Lesdy is not so lucky. Caught between hard rock and the impenetrable Bubble field, momentum carries Guy into the aid, and they squished into stone.

After witnessing their kin’s death, Lesdy and the other woman make greater haste into the greenhouse, daggers drawn, watching their backs.

Lesdy ought to have watched her front.

Cat, hearing the commotion, jumps into a tree before jumping down onto these two returned with weapons out. Without mercy and without words exchanged, Cat slays Lesdy and her ilk.

Breakout!

The trio, now rejoined, searches the corpses for anything useful, as one does. On Lesdy is a pocket full of bleeding eyeballs – large, small, grey, green, blue, brown, utterly black.

Eureka! The characters understand these are eyes for the one-eyed statue they found before.

A short journey later, an eye from the pile gets settled in the stone-king’s socket. With a crack and crumble, the wall behind the characters falls apart, rolling into empty spots in the cobble as by some unseen will.

Within the dreary apartment before hidden is the sought Aldor. The spawn is starved, slightly maddened, desperate for Rotblack, and unwilling to leave.

After what they’ve been through, Cat, Bubble Guy, and Invisible give but few words before hauling the youth out. Muscling Aldor through the ravages of the complex, Aldor is unable to break free before being matched back to the locked surface gate to a welcoming party… of no-one.

No sound echoes through the falling ashes, no form breaks the smooth monotony of mounded char. As above, so below goes the grey waste endlessly.

The characters barely have time to shrug at each other and rattle the bars before a collection of dark coaches rumble through the drifts.

Sleeker steps out to welcome them and welcome back Aldor. The Shadow King’s favorite rants and rages all for naught as hulking, shapeless things of flickering smoke and shadow guide Aldor into a windowless carriage.

The return of any of the party, not to mention all three, was quite unexpected for Sleeker, especially when the first day waned. So much is the surprise, Sleeker can only give a gift in the moment of the trio’s lives. Should they want more, they perhaps could inquire at the Shadow Keep.

As Sleeker boards the last coach, it has little worry all of them may meet again. After all, the prisoners-turned-heroes-of-the-kingdom have managed to cheat death so far…

The End of Days

Left alone in the falling grey, the characters must delay any decision making once more as the second day passes and darkness begins to settle.

Above, the clouds part to a blacker-than-black sky, a void that touches at the very foundations of one’s soul. From the expanse fall legions of stars that sound like a million million screaming trumpets. Yet all this is forgotten as between the visions seen in the nothingness above and fundamental, undeniable feelings of despair, comes meaning, as prophesied in the holy Calendar of Nechrubel:

OF THOSE WHO BUILD MIGHTILY, STONE BY STONE, SO SHALL THEY FALL, STONE BY STONE.

Divinity has ordained the end is nigh! Thus concludes one of the last days at the death of the world 💀

–

By sword and fire and word and spell, Cat, Bubble Guy (formerly Untouchable), and Invisible managed to make it back onto the surface of their dying world…

… in time to see a herald sign of the end 🔥🤘💀🤘🔥

Where will the party go next?

That is a story for another time 🙂 What I can do is say to check back next week for Part 4: A Reckoning where I explore what worked (or not) and how that has affected the BITS system of tabletop roleplaying.

Big, big thanks to player C for being exquisite in roleplay, rolling, and patience as we got through a long and deadly adventure ~ Lots of fun in Rotblack Sludge!

See you next week! Cheers to your own dungeon delves 🐉