Scion - Petro Campaign - Session 112
Ouch! Being smacked around by a sharktopus (read: lusca) sucks. I'm really starting to hate these Drowned Road bitches. >_< Anyway, I imagine we'll run into more before it's all said and done. That's what we get for heading into Mami-Wata's territory…
So anyway, we made it safely to Terreriro in the hovering fortress, though it did take us awhile to cross the flooded seas in that thing. It's not the fastest ride around. But it is the safest! We dropped the Loa off to join forces with the Aztlanti, and Elisa rejoined us. We gave her a run down on what happened during the trip, though really, I think the sight of the floating fortress said more than enough! (^_^)
Anyway, we decided that we needed to go make sure Damballa was okay before we headed into the Drowned Road to deal with the sirens and hopefully f**k up whoever was in charge of the attack on Ville-au-Camp so that they would retire their forces and end the assault. That's the plan, anyway. But like I said, first Damballa. Erzulie asked so nicely, and right now he's the only one still isolated.
So we loaded back up on the leviathan ship, which is now chromed. I suggested that we attach one of the anti-gravity generators to the ship so the we could simply fly over the waters, which would let us avoid a lot of unnecessary titanspawn attacks. Charles and Adam thought that was a marvelous idea, and so it was done. They also decided to mount one of the fortresses huge cannons on the ship as well. The damned thing runs almost the whole length of the ship, so gods help us if they decide to fire the thing. And quite frankly, the ship looks utterly ridiculous, but Charles, Pierre, T-Bone and Adam apparently think it's pretty damn awesome. Boys will be boys. (^_^)
Since we were flying, getting to Damballa's sanctum in Ife (the African portion of Ville-au-Camp), was pretty uneventful. The only real challenge was maneuvering through all of the huge, dangerous creatures that live in Ife, like immense hippos and cape buffalo, and these huge rhino dinosaur things called ngooubou. I think the scientific term is rhinocerosaurus, but I might just be making that up. (^_O)
Fortunately, once we landed, we were guided by Elisa, who is an expert tracker and survivalist. She managed to lead us safely through Ife's jungles, avoiding roaming, hungry dinosaurs and other beasties along the way. Eventually, though, my shikome and I started hearing these terrifying drums sounding in the distance. The others couldn't really hear them well because they still had their ears plugged against the siren song, but when I heard the drums, I felt a strong urge to flee as quickly as possible. I kinda shoved the urge aside, though, and kept going. Tabby and the other shikome are crazy, so they're immune to such things and didn't seem all that worried. And besides, we all agreed that the drums were most likely one of Damballa's defense mechanisms, meant to scare off titanspawn.
Sure enough, that's exactly what they were. The beats grew louder and louder as we neared Damballa's sanctum, and we began noticing countless snakes in the trees and undergrowth, all watching us as we approached until we finally emerged from the jungle at a collection of large African huts surrounded by a tall wooden stockade made from local vegetation. It was pretty clear that we had arrived at one of Damballa's temples, so I stepped forward and called out to announce our arrival. Damaballa slithered out in the form of a huge constrictor snake and greeted us.
We explained the situation and he was relieved to hear that the rest of his pantheon was relatively safe. He was also pretty eager to let us escort him back to Terreiro to rendezvous with the others. So we headed back to the ship and then flew it back to Terreiro, again without any major incident (though I could see plenty of titanspawn sloshing around just beneath the waves, furious that they couldn't reach us! Losers! (^_^)
You know, I haven't dealt much with Damballa in my diplomatic duties, but I gotta tell ya, he's kinda sleazy. (
After we reunited Damballa and Erzulie, we decided to waste no time in seeking out the source of all this madness. But to do that, we would need to somehow track down the source of the siren song or find some other way to figure out where, exactly, the enemy forces were coming from. If we could assault their HQ, they'd likely retreat and the flooding would stop. That's when Charles hit upon the idea of following one of the horrid chain things we've been fighting back to its source. I mean, the chains seem to go on practically forever under the water, so they have to lead somewhere, right? The only problem is that once you defeat one, it withdraws super fast into the depths, and there's no way we could keep up. Well, some of us could, but not all of us, like ME, for instance. I suppose Elisa could probably track it somehow, but we decided to bypass the chain's end, which is the dangerous bit covered with hooks and corpses, and find a chain further down its length, deep under the water. Adam predicted that it would be unaware of us if we didn't attack it, and we would be able to follow it straight to the enemy HQ. Or so we hope.
So, after making our plans, we flew out over the waters, well away from the shore and beyond the flailing, corpse-spangled ends of several of the chains. Then plunged into the depths in a spot where we could find and follow the chains to the Drowned Road. Most of us just decided to hold our breath for the swim. We have the divine fortitude to do so for long enough to take care of this, I hope. Assuming we don't take too long with this, we should be okay. Charles made T-Bone a set of scuba gear, though, since he's not as durable as the rest of us. Oh, and Pierre used Cheval to physically absorb my shikome. Should we need them, he can exhale them so they can join the fight. Until then, they should be safely tucked away inside his soul. Weird, huh? Tabby and Mercy seemed a little dubious about it, but Ophelia and Audrey were excited to try out a new experience, and Sadako just didn't care one way or the other.
I should also mention that Adam just hasn't been the same since he got back from Vanheim. He's become more…capricious. I mean, it's still Adam, it's just that he seems like he's lightened up a bit. Which is honestly a good thing. I approve of the more whimsical Adam. But, uh…he seems to be dragging Charles along for the ride. I say this because in order to get far enough from the shore to dive into the seas, we had to fly. And Adam can fly. But instead, he decided that he wanted to be fired out of one of John Henry's fortress cannons. And Charles thought that would be fun too. Though actually I'm being unfair. The idea of shooting someone out of a cannon came up because Charles can't fly, so really he was the first to consider the option. Does that mean Charles is the subversive influence here? (^_^)
But anyway, about being shot out of a cannon…um…seriously? Those cannons are used to kill sea monsters! Despite what Adam claimed, it was not a trust exercise.
I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, and I think Sera would have had a fit if she'd been there. Those of us who were going to fly out on our own kinda waited anxiously as Charles and Adam were loaded into the cannons and then BOOM! The two of them shot from the cannon barrels , streaking over the waters and then slamming into the waves several miles from shore. Charles totally owned it. He sailed through the like he belonged there, arms folded calmly across his chest. Adam, on the other hand, was knocked unconscious when he hit his head on the way out of the cannon, and he sorta flailed limply through the air, cartwheeling end over end until his impact with the water jarred him awake. Poor Adam. I kissed his boo boo to make it better. And lemme tell ya, he needed it. I've never seen a welt that size on someone's forehead before.
So, with that bit of excitement out of the way, we swam into the depths, heading ever closer to the Drowned Road and the end to this nightmare.
Of course, nothing's ever easy, and before long I saw two great shapes looming out of the murky water, and then a third, smaller shape behind them. The big ones were two lusca, and they were torpedoing right toward us. The third shape was a beautiful mermaid, and something told me she was the dangerous one. So as the others prepared to fight the lusca, I winked at her and twisted in the water just so that my hair floated in the most alluringly hypnotic way possible, and the mermaid was mine. Entranced by my beauty, she was out of the fight.
But the lusca were on top of us by that point. Two sharktopi (um…I think that's the plural form…) are almost more than we can handle. Almost, but not quite. Charles, Elisa, and Adam unleashed a flurry of bullets to tear the beasts to shreds, and Pierre ripped tentacles off them with his bare hands. T-Bone flitted around running interference. As for me…I got beat to hell. There were just too many tentacles lashing through the waters for me to avoid them all, even having copied Charles and T-Bone's deft maneuvers. I've been able to heal myself, but it took a lot out of me. Adam took some bad hits too, but fortunately I was able to bolster him at the outset of the fight, so he came out of it okay.
Once the lusca were down, we brutally murdered the mermaid. There's no telling WHAT she could have done to screw us up, and we weren't taking any risks. Then we continued following the chains.
To be continued…
So anyway, we made it safely to Terreriro in the hovering fortress, though it did take us awhile to cross the flooded seas in that thing. It's not the fastest ride around. But it is the safest! We dropped the Loa off to join forces with the Aztlanti, and Elisa rejoined us. We gave her a run down on what happened during the trip, though really, I think the sight of the floating fortress said more than enough! (^_^)
Anyway, we decided that we needed to go make sure Damballa was okay before we headed into the Drowned Road to deal with the sirens and hopefully f**k up whoever was in charge of the attack on Ville-au-Camp so that they would retire their forces and end the assault. That's the plan, anyway. But like I said, first Damballa. Erzulie asked so nicely, and right now he's the only one still isolated.
So we loaded back up on the leviathan ship, which is now chromed. I suggested that we attach one of the anti-gravity generators to the ship so the we could simply fly over the waters, which would let us avoid a lot of unnecessary titanspawn attacks. Charles and Adam thought that was a marvelous idea, and so it was done. They also decided to mount one of the fortresses huge cannons on the ship as well. The damned thing runs almost the whole length of the ship, so gods help us if they decide to fire the thing. And quite frankly, the ship looks utterly ridiculous, but Charles, Pierre, T-Bone and Adam apparently think it's pretty damn awesome. Boys will be boys. (^_^)
Since we were flying, getting to Damballa's sanctum in Ife (the African portion of Ville-au-Camp), was pretty uneventful. The only real challenge was maneuvering through all of the huge, dangerous creatures that live in Ife, like immense hippos and cape buffalo, and these huge rhino dinosaur things called ngooubou. I think the scientific term is rhinocerosaurus, but I might just be making that up. (^_O)
Fortunately, once we landed, we were guided by Elisa, who is an expert tracker and survivalist. She managed to lead us safely through Ife's jungles, avoiding roaming, hungry dinosaurs and other beasties along the way. Eventually, though, my shikome and I started hearing these terrifying drums sounding in the distance. The others couldn't really hear them well because they still had their ears plugged against the siren song, but when I heard the drums, I felt a strong urge to flee as quickly as possible. I kinda shoved the urge aside, though, and kept going. Tabby and the other shikome are crazy, so they're immune to such things and didn't seem all that worried. And besides, we all agreed that the drums were most likely one of Damballa's defense mechanisms, meant to scare off titanspawn.
Sure enough, that's exactly what they were. The beats grew louder and louder as we neared Damballa's sanctum, and we began noticing countless snakes in the trees and undergrowth, all watching us as we approached until we finally emerged from the jungle at a collection of large African huts surrounded by a tall wooden stockade made from local vegetation. It was pretty clear that we had arrived at one of Damballa's temples, so I stepped forward and called out to announce our arrival. Damaballa slithered out in the form of a huge constrictor snake and greeted us.
We explained the situation and he was relieved to hear that the rest of his pantheon was relatively safe. He was also pretty eager to let us escort him back to Terreiro to rendezvous with the others. So we headed back to the ship and then flew it back to Terreiro, again without any major incident (though I could see plenty of titanspawn sloshing around just beneath the waves, furious that they couldn't reach us! Losers! (^_^)
You know, I haven't dealt much with Damballa in my diplomatic duties, but I gotta tell ya, he's kinda sleazy. (
After we reunited Damballa and Erzulie, we decided to waste no time in seeking out the source of all this madness. But to do that, we would need to somehow track down the source of the siren song or find some other way to figure out where, exactly, the enemy forces were coming from. If we could assault their HQ, they'd likely retreat and the flooding would stop. That's when Charles hit upon the idea of following one of the horrid chain things we've been fighting back to its source. I mean, the chains seem to go on practically forever under the water, so they have to lead somewhere, right? The only problem is that once you defeat one, it withdraws super fast into the depths, and there's no way we could keep up. Well, some of us could, but not all of us, like ME, for instance. I suppose Elisa could probably track it somehow, but we decided to bypass the chain's end, which is the dangerous bit covered with hooks and corpses, and find a chain further down its length, deep under the water. Adam predicted that it would be unaware of us if we didn't attack it, and we would be able to follow it straight to the enemy HQ. Or so we hope.
So, after making our plans, we flew out over the waters, well away from the shore and beyond the flailing, corpse-spangled ends of several of the chains. Then plunged into the depths in a spot where we could find and follow the chains to the Drowned Road. Most of us just decided to hold our breath for the swim. We have the divine fortitude to do so for long enough to take care of this, I hope. Assuming we don't take too long with this, we should be okay. Charles made T-Bone a set of scuba gear, though, since he's not as durable as the rest of us. Oh, and Pierre used Cheval to physically absorb my shikome. Should we need them, he can exhale them so they can join the fight. Until then, they should be safely tucked away inside his soul. Weird, huh? Tabby and Mercy seemed a little dubious about it, but Ophelia and Audrey were excited to try out a new experience, and Sadako just didn't care one way or the other.
I should also mention that Adam just hasn't been the same since he got back from Vanheim. He's become more…capricious. I mean, it's still Adam, it's just that he seems like he's lightened up a bit. Which is honestly a good thing. I approve of the more whimsical Adam. But, uh…he seems to be dragging Charles along for the ride. I say this because in order to get far enough from the shore to dive into the seas, we had to fly. And Adam can fly. But instead, he decided that he wanted to be fired out of one of John Henry's fortress cannons. And Charles thought that would be fun too. Though actually I'm being unfair. The idea of shooting someone out of a cannon came up because Charles can't fly, so really he was the first to consider the option. Does that mean Charles is the subversive influence here? (^_^)
But anyway, about being shot out of a cannon…um…seriously? Those cannons are used to kill sea monsters! Despite what Adam claimed, it was not a trust exercise.
I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, and I think Sera would have had a fit if she'd been there. Those of us who were going to fly out on our own kinda waited anxiously as Charles and Adam were loaded into the cannons and then BOOM! The two of them shot from the cannon barrels , streaking over the waters and then slamming into the waves several miles from shore. Charles totally owned it. He sailed through the like he belonged there, arms folded calmly across his chest. Adam, on the other hand, was knocked unconscious when he hit his head on the way out of the cannon, and he sorta flailed limply through the air, cartwheeling end over end until his impact with the water jarred him awake. Poor Adam. I kissed his boo boo to make it better. And lemme tell ya, he needed it. I've never seen a welt that size on someone's forehead before.
So, with that bit of excitement out of the way, we swam into the depths, heading ever closer to the Drowned Road and the end to this nightmare.
Of course, nothing's ever easy, and before long I saw two great shapes looming out of the murky water, and then a third, smaller shape behind them. The big ones were two lusca, and they were torpedoing right toward us. The third shape was a beautiful mermaid, and something told me she was the dangerous one. So as the others prepared to fight the lusca, I winked at her and twisted in the water just so that my hair floated in the most alluringly hypnotic way possible, and the mermaid was mine. Entranced by my beauty, she was out of the fight.
But the lusca were on top of us by that point. Two sharktopi (um…I think that's the plural form…) are almost more than we can handle. Almost, but not quite. Charles, Elisa, and Adam unleashed a flurry of bullets to tear the beasts to shreds, and Pierre ripped tentacles off them with his bare hands. T-Bone flitted around running interference. As for me…I got beat to hell. There were just too many tentacles lashing through the waters for me to avoid them all, even having copied Charles and T-Bone's deft maneuvers. I've been able to heal myself, but it took a lot out of me. Adam took some bad hits too, but fortunately I was able to bolster him at the outset of the fight, so he came out of it okay.
Once the lusca were down, we brutally murdered the mermaid. There's no telling WHAT she could have done to screw us up, and we weren't taking any risks. Then we continued following the chains.
To be continued…