Padre
Member
First, atm the title is a lie. Only the background is done so far, the scenario is to follow.
Rumble in the Jungle
Oldhammer ‘Bring out your Lead’ 2013 Scenario
Background
Deep in the jungles of the great southern continent of Lustria lies a long lost valley. For over a thousand years no-one in the outside world knew of its existence. Those who stumbled upon it never left. The first visitors were soldier-explorers from an ancient Southlands kingdom (now just as forgotten as the valley itself). The last were a band of Old World pirates searching the jungles for a city of gold, most of whom died fighting in the valley, the remainder being enslaved.
They were defeated by the valley’s defenders, a large tribe of pygmies and their war beasts and allies. Once, millennia ago, when strange powers ruled the valley, the pygmies were mere slaves, living lives of drudgery, scuttling about the valley barely noticed by their masters, polishing this and scrubbing that, weeding here and tending there. They used domesticated, native animals as beasts of burden. To perform different tasks, other slaves were brought to the valley by the masters - including a tribe of hairy ape-like men taken from their home on an entirely different continent.
The masters themselves lived a life very different from their slaves – being more akin to gods than mortals. They clothed themselves in shimmering garb, wielded potent, magical tools and weapons, and travelled in most mysterious ways. They built 3 (and perhaps began a fourth – depending on Thantsants!!) large, stone temple-homes, arrayed in a manner pleasing to themselves, and they dug a deep underground cavern where they performed secret rituals and stored their most precious belongings. And then, one day, they were gone.
The valley and their slaves remained. Over a thousand years passed, perhaps several thousand – the pygmies are not very good at keeping time – and the slaves changed. They could not leave the valley as the very notion never occurred to them. The masters had dominated them so well that even today they believe it is their most important duty to serve the valley and the temple-homes within. But in other ways they changed. They grew more intelligent, becoming more fearsome and a lot more independent. They bred their beasts to make them more ferocious so that they could fight in battle, and they made the hairy-apes obedient to them. The stories they told of the past mutated through the years, and although they still revered the temple-homes and the beings who dwelt there with deep religious reverence, their gods and beliefs came to bear little similarity to the actual, distant past. They began to worship immortal pygmy fathers and mothers, who manifested through divinely chosen individuals in each generation, re-born again and again. Then, for a time, their religion became cruel, as they found ways to reanimate the dead – trying to keep their gods within their chosen host for longer than the host’s mortal life. Eventually they shunned such practices, for the living dead seemed unworthy of containing their gods – and most doubted that the gods truly inhabited such hosts anyway. But they did not forget the sinister art of re-animating the dead, a knowledge passed on to selected shamans of each generation.
Then came the RUMBLE! An earth-quaking tremor that rocked the whole valley. The pygmies’ huts collapsed, many of their statues tumbled, and huge boulders came rolling down from the heights. Several sections of the cunningly crafted (to appear natural) valley walls crumbled, leaving rubble-strewn gaps like gates. The temple-homes remained standing, for they had been divinely crafted, but cracks and fissures appeared in their ancient stone walls. And deep beneath the ground, in the completely forgotten caverns, something toppled, something jarred, something cracke, and an artifact so intricate as to defy all mortal understanding stuttered into life.
This subterranean artifact is connected to the temples above. Once it was used by the masters to facilitate their magical mode of travel. Now it is partially awakened, bleeding phosphorescent fluids, emitting eerie illuminations, and reaching out, uncontrolled and chaotic, to distant times and places.
The pygmies don’t know this. They are too busy righting their statues, rounding up their beasts, and arguing over which temple they ought to attempt to patch up first. They also don’t know that the RUMBLE was heard and felt by others. Nor that a wave of magical energy rippled out from the valley when the deeply buried thing broke, whispering of ancient power and wisdom to the magically sensitive. Nor that the last of the enslaved pirates were not buried underneath a rock slide as they believe, but fled over the valley wall to carry word of the valley to the outside world.
So they cannot know that several interested parties (some out of curiosity, others out of greed) are this very day approaching their valley.
.....................................................................
Note: In case you're wondering, the deep cavern is far too deep for anyone to reach. But the temple-homes ('homes' being the clue) have got precious, ancient artifact stuff in them too, which is now accessible due to the cracks and fissures. (No, I don't know the difference between a crack and a fissure.) Thus we have the basis for a 'smash and grab' scenario. It's all about who gets away with the most loot.
Rumble in the Jungle
Oldhammer ‘Bring out your Lead’ 2013 Scenario
Background
Deep in the jungles of the great southern continent of Lustria lies a long lost valley. For over a thousand years no-one in the outside world knew of its existence. Those who stumbled upon it never left. The first visitors were soldier-explorers from an ancient Southlands kingdom (now just as forgotten as the valley itself). The last were a band of Old World pirates searching the jungles for a city of gold, most of whom died fighting in the valley, the remainder being enslaved.
They were defeated by the valley’s defenders, a large tribe of pygmies and their war beasts and allies. Once, millennia ago, when strange powers ruled the valley, the pygmies were mere slaves, living lives of drudgery, scuttling about the valley barely noticed by their masters, polishing this and scrubbing that, weeding here and tending there. They used domesticated, native animals as beasts of burden. To perform different tasks, other slaves were brought to the valley by the masters - including a tribe of hairy ape-like men taken from their home on an entirely different continent.
The masters themselves lived a life very different from their slaves – being more akin to gods than mortals. They clothed themselves in shimmering garb, wielded potent, magical tools and weapons, and travelled in most mysterious ways. They built 3 (and perhaps began a fourth – depending on Thantsants!!) large, stone temple-homes, arrayed in a manner pleasing to themselves, and they dug a deep underground cavern where they performed secret rituals and stored their most precious belongings. And then, one day, they were gone.
The valley and their slaves remained. Over a thousand years passed, perhaps several thousand – the pygmies are not very good at keeping time – and the slaves changed. They could not leave the valley as the very notion never occurred to them. The masters had dominated them so well that even today they believe it is their most important duty to serve the valley and the temple-homes within. But in other ways they changed. They grew more intelligent, becoming more fearsome and a lot more independent. They bred their beasts to make them more ferocious so that they could fight in battle, and they made the hairy-apes obedient to them. The stories they told of the past mutated through the years, and although they still revered the temple-homes and the beings who dwelt there with deep religious reverence, their gods and beliefs came to bear little similarity to the actual, distant past. They began to worship immortal pygmy fathers and mothers, who manifested through divinely chosen individuals in each generation, re-born again and again. Then, for a time, their religion became cruel, as they found ways to reanimate the dead – trying to keep their gods within their chosen host for longer than the host’s mortal life. Eventually they shunned such practices, for the living dead seemed unworthy of containing their gods – and most doubted that the gods truly inhabited such hosts anyway. But they did not forget the sinister art of re-animating the dead, a knowledge passed on to selected shamans of each generation.
Then came the RUMBLE! An earth-quaking tremor that rocked the whole valley. The pygmies’ huts collapsed, many of their statues tumbled, and huge boulders came rolling down from the heights. Several sections of the cunningly crafted (to appear natural) valley walls crumbled, leaving rubble-strewn gaps like gates. The temple-homes remained standing, for they had been divinely crafted, but cracks and fissures appeared in their ancient stone walls. And deep beneath the ground, in the completely forgotten caverns, something toppled, something jarred, something cracke, and an artifact so intricate as to defy all mortal understanding stuttered into life.
This subterranean artifact is connected to the temples above. Once it was used by the masters to facilitate their magical mode of travel. Now it is partially awakened, bleeding phosphorescent fluids, emitting eerie illuminations, and reaching out, uncontrolled and chaotic, to distant times and places.
The pygmies don’t know this. They are too busy righting their statues, rounding up their beasts, and arguing over which temple they ought to attempt to patch up first. They also don’t know that the RUMBLE was heard and felt by others. Nor that a wave of magical energy rippled out from the valley when the deeply buried thing broke, whispering of ancient power and wisdom to the magically sensitive. Nor that the last of the enslaved pirates were not buried underneath a rock slide as they believe, but fled over the valley wall to carry word of the valley to the outside world.
So they cannot know that several interested parties (some out of curiosity, others out of greed) are this very day approaching their valley.
.....................................................................
Note: In case you're wondering, the deep cavern is far too deep for anyone to reach. But the temple-homes ('homes' being the clue) have got precious, ancient artifact stuff in them too, which is now accessible due to the cracks and fissures. (No, I don't know the difference between a crack and a fissure.) Thus we have the basis for a 'smash and grab' scenario. It's all about who gets away with the most loot.