NUMBER 0: Here it is. After a long near-two hour session, after a long near-two hours of exceptional patience, we now finally arrive at Rob Pastamoose’s introduction. At Number 3’s big moment.
Number 3 lightly shrieks in glee.
NUMBER 1: I’ve also been sitting here patiently watching all of you bozos suck at this game. Just saying.
NUMBER 2: Nobody cares about you anymore.
NUMBER 4: Yeah, Brad is old news.
NUMBER 3: It’s Rob’s time to shine! Let’s go!
NUMBER 1: I’ll just be making a point to not listen to anything that’s going on.
NUMBER 4: But aren’t you so excited for the wacky antics that Rob Pastamoose will get tangled in?
NUMBER 0: You sure should be.
NUMBER 1: Anything short of violent psychological torture, I will force myself not to be interested in.
NUMBER 0: Okay, then. Number 3. Rob Pastamoose. Robert. You wake up… hanging from a meat rack in the middle of a slaughterhouse.
NUMBER 4: Whoa!
NUMBER 3: What? Are you joking right now?
NUMBER 0: You’re being hung by a really long chain wrapped around your arms and under your armpits, attached to a hook in a conveyor line. And you’re surrounded by more lines of carcasses of animals you don’t recognize.
NUMBER 1: Wait, what the fuck? I was just joking before.
NUMBER 2: You’re fucked, Rob.
NUMBER 3: No! Aw, shit!
NUMBER 0: You can’t tell if the carcasses are mammals or fish, but the smell is putrid and the atmosphere is dense. You’re in some kind of a factory setting, not lying in a cooler. The conveyer line you’re hanging from leads through rooms with plastic strip curtains on each end of this big facility, with white light emanating from behind. The ceiling is… quite high. And obscure machinery is everywhere. Conveyor belts in the air and on the ground, metal grate walkways and stairs and ladders going up around the whole complex like a multi-story maze and rooms up and down the walls they lead to, all kinds of pulley and lift systems, a huge meat grinder, and so, so many fucking chopped up animals. Light bulbs attached by string or by screw are scattered behind and above all sorts of objects in weird places, casting dozens of shadows all over the place. It all goes down in this complex. It’s a vegan’s literal hell.
NUMBER 1: Rob Pastamoose sounds like a vegan. I mean, his last name is a given.
NUMBER 4: This is both cool and nauseating.
NUMBER 3: This is fucking terrifying! I’m gonna wake up and go, “AHHH! AAAAAHH! AH! AHHHH! OH MY GOD!! HELP! HEEELP! AAAAHHH!”
NUMBER 0: You hear a voice somewhere close that you can’t see whisper, “Hey! Shut up!” The conveyor you’re hanging on starts rattling, following the crankling of nearby machinery.
NUMBER 3: “OH GOD! NO! NO NO NO NONO! AAAHHH! HELP! NOOO!”
NUMBER 0: This fucking dwarf-shaped guy jumps out from above and swings over the conveyor to land right in front you. He’s got the usual dwarvish stumpiness, and is almost bald with like, scruffy little baby hair, and a peach-fuzzy rounded face. “—Slightly high-pitched voice—Quiet! You gonna blow my cover! I trying to help!”
NUMBER 4: We got a dwarf friend!
NUMBER 3: “Wh-who are you? What am I doing here?”
NUMBER 0: “Me name is Baslar. Honored representative of the independent nation of Genourg, and subject of Supreme Chief Tyga Kumar. We not from around here, you likely not heard of us. You unfortunately felled victim to the evil empire of Sararong, and they treacherous leader Emperor Murtagh. They an uncivilized bunch, brutal and cannibals. I explain more when you free.”
NUMBER 3: “Cannibals?!”
NUMBER 1: Cannibals! Let’s go!
NUMBER 3: “Tell me exactly what I’m doing here and why before I completely freak out! I have panic attacks very easily!”
NUMBER 0: “Sorry, sir. I no have time for that. Got to free you first.”
NUMBER 3: “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t freaking panic right now!”
NUMBER 0: “I not stop you from panicking. You can panic, but you gonna get you killed.”
NUMBER 3: “I’m already afraid of getting killed! I’m in a slaughterhouse! That’s why I’m panicking!”
NUMBER 0: “Just hang tight, sir. I gonna get you out safely.”
NUMBER 4: We really saved the most fucked up for last.
NUMBER 1: Cannibalize Rob! Do it!
NUMBER 3: No!
NUMBER 0: So Baslar goes right back to where he was, climbing on the meat carcasses and leaping onto a pillar connected to a bunch of small pipes. He crawls out of view, then reappears above you hanging from the pillar with this sick glowing red scimitar in hand, and whacks at your chain with it. You wobble around for a bit as he keeps hitting it, then he winds up one big swing and fucking chops you loose onto the ground. You shake all the chains loose, with feeling slowly returning to your arms.
NUMBER 4: Scimitars are like those curved pirate swords, right?
NUMBER 0: I don’t believe pirates ever actually used them, except for your fictional Captain Hooks and such. They’re more an ancient Arabian thing.
NUMBER 4: Even cooler.
NUMBER 0: Baslar lands gracefully back in front of you. He sheeths the sword on his back between two bands over his shoulders, and says, “You—”
NUMBER 3: “Why am I kidnapped by cannibals?! What is the ‘Genourg’?! Who is Marduch?! Why do they want me killed?!”
NUMBER 0: “It not—”
NUMBER 3: “And who are you?!”
NUMBER 0: “I promi—”
NUMBER 3: “I don’t want to get killed! I don’t even know who I am! What am I doing here?!”
NUMBER 0: “You need—”
NUMBER 3: “I don’t wanna be here! Get me out of here!” And when I rush to grab his shoulders, I accidentally twitch my neck back and ragdoll onto the floor.
NUMBER 1: Pffffffpfpff.
NUMBER 0: I—Cough—Okay, so you rush to grab at Baslar, he tenses up and reaches for something bulging from his pocket, and then you just out of nowhere buckle and fucking collapse onto the ground like a Gmod character. Insert heart monitor sounds here.
NUMBER 4: Beep—Beep—Beeeeeeeeeeep.
NUMBER 0: Thank you. So you’re fully sprawled out on the slaughterhouse floor, your limbs bending in ways that cannot possibly be comfortable, and Baslar has no idea what the fuck just happened. He isn’t sure you just got killed or what.
NUMBER 1: Rob just almost got shot.
NUMBER 0: Baslar just kind of pokes at Rob and goes, “Sir? Is you okay? What happened?”
NUMBER 3: I snap back and go, “—Gasps for air—Sorry, that’s a thing I do.”
NUMBER 4: —Snorts—That’s your explanation of that?
NUMBER 2: You can’t breathe while you’re ragdolled?
NUMBER 3: Nah, all control of my body is snapped off.
NUMBER 2: That feels like a problem.
NUMBER 1: Yeah, what if you’re playing dead around some guys who won’t leave?
NUMBER 0: We’ll get there when and if we get there. For now, Baslar says, “Huhn? What did you—ugh, no mind. You need escape. But first—” Rob, you see behind Baslar and the lines of hanging animal carcasses a group of about four armed people walking towards you.
NUMBER 3: —Pointing aggressively—“Buh-behind!”
NUMBER 1: Look what you did, you dumbass.
NUMBER 4: Time for Rob to get cannibalized.
NUMBER 0: Baslar gets confused and turns around. He pushes aside a carcass in his way and goes, “Oooh.”
NUMBER 2: Watch yourself, Pastamoose. It’s knives out now.
NUMBER 0: The guy leading the pack pulls out a bloodied machete and says, “Weeeell, boys, it lookings like we got two fresh meats for the price of one!”
Number 4 silently chuckles.
NUMBER 0: Baslar pulls his scimitar back out. “It you people. The Sararongans.”
NUMBER 1: Sararongans.
NUMBER 0: The other three guys pull out their various knives. Shit is on. Everyone is ready for fucking blood.
NUMBER 4: Saragononans.
NUMBER 1: Sargaranonans.
NUMBER 3: “Uh… ” I start hyperventilating.
NUMBER 0: Baslar says to you, “Stay behind me. Keep away from knives.”
NUMBER 3: “Yeah, NO SHIT! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sweared.”
Number 1 explodes into laughter.
NUMBER 0: So as you’re hyperventilating, you notice Baslar’s glowing scimitar starts glowing brighter, and looking closer at it, you see something strange about its reflection. It doesn’t seem to be reflecting the surrounding setting—in fact, the reflection looks like a portal to some other place entirely. A place very dark and very red. Almost like Hell.
NUMBER 3: Is it Hell?
NUMBER 0: You have no idea. All that you do know is that billows of black dust or gas are starting to emanate from it.
NUMBER 3: Oh.
NUMBER 0: Baslar swings the sword out and blasts a cloud of dust into the faces of the Sararongans. And he charges right into the fray.
NUMBER 1: Get ‘em. Get ‘em!
NUMBER 0: He screams at you to “Hide!” as a flurry of metal clanging and limbs flying erupts before you. Baslar’s fucking jump-kicking them around, smacking away tiny knives with his huge sword, fogging up the whole scene with dust and smoke—Baslar is basically the greatest fucking swordsman you have ever seen. Those people are not touching him. But it looks like they’re pretty good at keeping him from hitting them too. There’s a lot of swings, but not a lot of damage. Except of course when Baslar is able to land every good punch in the face.
NUMBER 2: Is Baslar going to be every D&D game’s overpowered NPC who gets ditched because he helps the party too much?
NUMBER 3: I’m just watching. I’m mesmerized by this.
NUMBER 0: Well, you’re going to be less mesmerized by the guy who just broke from the pack fight and is approaching you with a cleaver.
NUMBER 3: “Ah!!”
NUMBER 0: “Come ‘ere, fresh meat! We ain’t done with you!”
NUMBER 1: Explode him! You’ve got the explodey thing in your chest!
NUMBER 3: That’s going to blow his body apart! No!
NUMBER 1: That’s the point!
NUMBER 3: I… uh… throw a meat carcass into him!
NUMBER 0: A whole ass carcass? Those aren’t exactly small. Mind rolling muscle mass for me?
NUMBER 3: Of course I don’t.
Number 3 rolls a 9.
NUMBER 3: Ooh! And my score is… 1. So that’s… I did it!
NUMBER 0: You rolled with a muscle mass of 1 and nailed it! Incredible.
NUMBER 3: Yeah!
NUMBER 2: Whatever.
NUMBER 1: Middleburg Nickelhead mad as hell right now.
NUMBER 0: Wow. So, Rob somehow summons the force of some long-deceased ancestor, grabs that fucking sack of sloppy raw meat in front of him, and just launches it forward. And that carcass swings ahead, doesn’t come close to the guy approaching you, swings back and fucking crashes right into you.
NUMBER 1: Uh!
NUMBER 0: You just got laid out by a dead animal that you threw.
NUMBER 3: Dammit!
Number 1 proceeds to burst out laughing again.
NUMBER 2: Hey, what’s Rob’s brain activity number?
NUMBER 3: That’d be 3.
NUMBER 2: Checks out.
NUMBER 4: You would have done that same shit, Middlebuck.
NUMBER 1: We’re all fucking stupid, to be fair.
NUMBER 0: Okay. Rob is fucking knocked onto the floor, head is spinning, and a guy with a cleaver is approaching. He laughs at you and goes, “Ah, the least intelligent ones always taste the best.”
NUMBER 1: Explode! Explode, you shitstain!
NUMBER 3: But I don’t wanna!
NUMBER 0: Just as the guy comes within like five feet of you, Baslar chucks his scimitar right through this guy’s chest. All the way through.
NUMBER 3: Ah!
NUMBER 0: But instead of spraying out blood, billows of smoke blow out as the skin around the sword wound rots into a black crust and he gradually screams, “Ah! Ahahah! Hahah! Ahh! Aaahhh! AAHHHHH! AHHHHHAHAH!” And he falls over dead right in front of you.
NUMBER 3: “Oh god! Oh gosh!” I’m kicking myself away in panic. ‘Cause that’s fucked up.
NUMBER 0: Yeah. Baslar rushes over to collect the sword from the body, and a guy chases him over preparing to stab his ass. Baslar tears the sword out, and with that momentum swings it fucking hard behind him and tears right through the Sararongan, up his chest and through his whole face, leaving a trail of fiery sparks.
NUMBER 4: Oh!
NUMBER 1: Yeah! Oh yeah.
NUMBER 4: I was worried Rob had just gotten Baslar killed for a second.
NUMBER 0: Never. He’s Baslar. And the guy he just sliced up, his crusted wounds fucking ignite. His clothes catch fire, his face starts smoldering, and when the rotting seeps into his brain, he just falls flat over on his back. He just gets slashed, tilts, and fucking crashes. All sorts of fucked up. Two more guys remain, and they’re creeping around Baslar like cats about to pounce.
NUMBER 3: And I’m right in their path too?
NUMBER 0: You’re right in their path too. And you see them shooting hungry glances at you as they hover.
Number 3 shudders.
NUMBER 1: I should have made my character a cannibal. Just realizing that. Things could have been so much more interesting.
NUMBER 4: Who’s to say Brad isn’t already immensely interesting?
NUMBER 1: Nevermind, you should have made your character a cannibal so you were playing somebody interesting.
NUMBER 4: Hey!
NUMBER 0: The combat is supposed to be happening in this slaughterhouse, and yet here I see a bloodbath right in front of me.
NUMBER 4: Can it. I expect a proper round of ass-kissing as all three of you die before me. I’m the only one with a lasting chance in this game.
NUMBER 2: Everybody has full rights and privileges to make fun of my character or Rob or Brad, but the moment somebody touches yours, it’s a whole different ballgame.
NUMBER 4: I’ve refrained from making fun of you people. Stuff yourself.
NUMBER 0: Baslar and the Sararongans, in a standoff. Who will break first?
NUMBER 1: I feel like calling them “Sararans” would make more sense.
NUMBER 0: Baslar zips down his fly, extends a small tube out from his pants, and shoots a dart into chest of the guy on the left. And in seconds, he falls into cardiac arrest and starts coughing up toxic smoke on the ground.
NUMBER 1: Huh?! Penis dart gun?!
NUMBER 4: Oh, wow.
NUMBER 0: The last guy left charges Baslar with two steak knives.
NUMBER 3: I’m gonna ragdoll again and just play dead for no reason.
NUMBER 0: Well, alright. Actually… So you click your neck and just faceplant on the ground, ass up and all. The Sararongan is taken completely off guard by that and his charge is broken for just a second, but it’s a second enough for Baslar to take advantage of the distraction and lunge his sword into the Sararongan’s neck. He lets out one last—Ghastly exhale—before falling loose from the sword and crashing dead on the floor.
NUMBER 4: Woo!
NUMBER 3: Wowie. Now… we’re safe.
NUMBER 0: You’re safe!
NUMBER 3: Everyone trying to kill me is dead?
NUMBER 0: All of them. Four dead bodies on the ground, and two alive ones, and you’re one of those two alive ones.
NUMBER 3: Coolio—I’m gonna start puking on the body in front of me.
NUMBER 1: Wuh?
NUMBER 2: Yup.
NUMBER 0: Yeah—Okay, you just watched four people get slaughtered, and now you’re puking. Baslar looks at you startled and goes, “O! Not on the bodies! That make it worse!”
Number 1 snickers.
NUMBER 4: Fucking gross.
NUMBER 0: Yup. You’re just expelling all your steaming vomit onto the rotting neck and face of the dead body before you. Just blowing chunks until you don’t have any left. Heaving out acidic little gobs of whatever food you ate last, pouring over a dead and graying face and into his mouth, eyes, and nose. Your digestive system and your lungs are succinctly emptied.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
NUMBER 4: Stop!
NUMBER 0: And you drop to your knees, out of breath and feeling like your stomach has been flattened. And your head is now much closer to the vomit-drenched rotting carcass. The putrid smell of it is fuming into your nostrils.
Number 1 and 4 both gag.
NUMBER 3: Not… quite the level of detail I was imagining. I would like to be standing up.
NUMBER 0: Sure. So… Baslar helps you up after that and leads you away from your vomit mess. You don’t need to keep looking at that rotting body whose face you just puked all over. Baslar pats you on the shoulder. “Is you good?”
NUMBER 3: “I—Cough—I is good.”
NUMBER 0: “Okay. We not out of woods just yet. More people will be coming. But problem first. When Sararongans seized slaughterhouse, they took workers hostage. They in a room way up there.” And he points to the maze of catwalks and stairs above. “Need you to go up and free them. I swiped this key before I come to free you.” He drops the slightly uncomfortably large key in your hand, and points to this open metal stairwell in the middle of the factory leading about 40 feet in the air to the closest catwalk. “Go there. Room with workers is at north wall. You will see when looking in window. I will keep guard here.”
NUMBER 3: I’m gonna cough one last huck of vomit into his face and go “What?”
NUMBER 4: Uagh!
NUMBER 0: You choke out the biggest heave of air you can still manage, blasting out the remaining vomit chunks clinging in your mouth, sending a waft of vomit breath and crumbs of your innards into Baslar’s face.
NUMBER 2: Can we stop this yet?
NUMBER 0: Baslar’s face twinges and he backs away from you while rapidly wiping himself clean.
NUMBER 4: How did we go from cool fight scene to this?
NUMBER 3: “Cannibals are trying to kill me! I was just hung up on a meat hook like a group ‘a cleavers were coming to slice the fat out of my buttcheeks! I gotta get the heck out of here, man! You can handle yourself, y-you go free those guys!”
NUMBER 1: He raises a good point.
NUMBER 0: “I not go up there! Has to be you! Quick!”
NUMBER 3: “Can’t ya just go up with me at least?”
NUMBER 0: “No. Must stay here and prevent Sararongans from getting close.”
NUMBER 3: “That’s fuckin’ made up!”
NUMBER 0: “Look, I… I afraid of heights. I get vertigo.”
Number 1 cackles.
NUMBER 0: “Now you going to argue some more, or you going to free the workers?”
NUMBER 3: I’m beginning to not trust this guy.
NUMBER 2: Same vibe here. What’s waiting up those stairs?
NUMBER 0: The slaughterhouse workers, obviously.
NUMBER 4: Guys, Baslar just killed four cannibals. I don’t think he has sinister intentions.
NUMBER 3: “I… Hrrgh… Mrrmh… Fine. I’ll go… get them.”
NUMBER 0: “Yay!” And he runs away to guard the doors the guys entered from.
NUMBER 3: “Uh—i—thanks!”
NUMBER 0: And now there you are.
NUMBER 3: There I am. Is there, perhaps… somewhere to escape?
NUMBER 0: Aside from the door Baslar is guarding? Well, there’s the rooms the conveyors are leading past those plastic strip curtains. On the wall to the left between the conveyor lines and the entrance, there’s two huge garage doors that seem to be padlocked shut, but no door immediately beside them. You can’t tell if the gates lead outside or not, and no vehicles are around.
NUMBER 3: Could the room behind those curtains lead outside?
NUMBER 0: Just how eager are you to escape?
NUMBER 3: Pretty eager. I, uh… don’t want to go up on those catwalks. You’re planning something.
NUMBER 4: But you can’t risk Baslar’s protection. What if you run away and some guy jumps you?
NUMBER 1: Just explode him. You can handle yourself.
NUMBER 2: Don’t fool yourself. Rob is a coward. If any bad guy pops out, he’s going to die.
NUMBER 4: You need to rescue the workers, Rob! Don’t be stupid!
NUMBER 0: I believe I’m sensing there’s a… moral conflict at play. Another angel-and-devil-on-shoulder situation. Shall we roll for cowardice?
NUMBER 3: It ain’t even cowardice, I just don’t want whatever it is your cooking.
NUMBER 2: That’s cowardice.
NUMBER 1: What if he’s cooking up something worse on your escape route?
NUMBER 3: I… fuckin’… I’m in a box. Hand me that 10-sided thingo.
NUMBER 2: It’s called a D10. And you already have it.
NUMBER 3: Oh. Right. My morality is 6, so… 4 or higher means I go to rescue the workers.
NUMBER 0: Yup.
Number 3 thoroughly shakes the D10 and rolls a 7.
NUMBER 3: Rats. My better angels prevail.
NUMBER 4: Phew.
NUMBER 2: This is probably a dodged bullet.
NUMBER 0: A rush of thought about using the opportunity to escape hits you, and you freeze for a second, but the jolt of fear of being undefended in unsecured territory overpowers it. You sigh and run to the stairs. Now, these stairs are made of the same flimsy grate metal as the catwalks, and the steps are just flat slabs sticking out of the beams in the middle that you can slip your foot under. And the handrail is held up by a pole on every other stair. So when you take your first steps up, you feel the stairs shaking.
NUMBER 3: Oh no.
NUMBER 0: And that shaking gets worse the higher up you climb.
NUMBER 2: How long are these stair slabs?
NUMBER 0: About… let’s say three feet wide, maybe ten inches long.
NUMBER 3: Oh.
NUMBER 2: So they’re tiny. And theoretically, if they’re spaced out enough, you could slip your entire body between the stairs.
NUMBER 0: If you’re, say, thin enough.
NUMBER 3: Nuh uh. Not if I’m… crawling on fours!
NUMBER 0: Hell yeah. You crawl up those stairs like a seven-year-old pretending to be a dog. You’re so concentrated on putting one hand and foot in front of the other that you can’t see Baslar looking at you below, intensely confused.
NUMBER 4: Hell yeah.
NUMBER 0: You make it about halfway up the stairs pretty quickly, handling all the turning well. Now roll for me… body stability + depth perception.
NUMBER 2: I knew it. I knew that exact combination was coming.
NUMBER 3: Oh boy. That’s… a combined 7. Gimme a 14!
NUMBER 2: You mean 13.
Number 3 grabs the D20 and rolls a 4.
NUMBER 3: Rats!
NUMBER 1: Fall off the stairs!
NUMBER 0: You miscalculate your movements just a bit and slip a hand off of the next stair. Your head goes down and you get fucking jawed by that metal slab, and your body starts sliding down the stairs.
NUMBER 4: Ah!
NUMBER 0: You bang your head even more stair by stair, only caught from falling off completely by a pole holding the handrail nailing right between your legs. You got it right in the balls.
Number 1 squirms.
NUMBER 4: Oh, fuck.
NUMBER 3: I’ve got that retractible dick, though. So less worse than that could have been.
NUMBER 2: Was that it?
NUMBER 0: Yeah. Rob shakes off the shock of that spike groin and drags himself back up. You keep climbing like usual.
NUMBER 3: Then what was the point of that?
NUMBER 0: There wasn’t one. I just wanted to hit you in the nuts.
NUMBER 3: You bastard.
NUMBER 0: You climb up the stairs. And you climb with a lot more caution, successfully avoiding any more missteps that could really cost you. You are now 40 feet in the air, on a flimsy metal catwalk, the center of which is held up by cables strung to the catwalk above, which is in turn lifted by cables strung to the catwalk about that, and so on. The complex before and above you is a labyrinth of stairs, ladders, makeshift elevators, supply lifts, tables, some whole ass rooms just being held in midair, and there’s at least a dozen rooms scattered on all four walls. And you have no fucking idea which wall is the north one.
NUMBER 1: Can I say? How did Baslar know which wall specifically these workers were being kept?
NUMBER 4: Yeah, he’s supposed to be scared of heights.
NUMBER 0: Well, he had the key to their door that he gave to Rob. Maybe he found the door earlier, then went back to find the key before waking you up.
NUMBER 2: There’s a very curious order of prior events here.
NUMBER 3: Then where’s the door!
NUMBER 0: You try scanning the scene for a door anywhere with an obvious lock, and then the catwalk starts shaking. The slight movements of your feet are causing the shock traveling up through the cables and their corresponding catwalks and platforms to bounce back and create this ricochet effect of shaking that you’re bearing the brunt of at the bottom. The walkway is trying to wobble both forward and backward at the same time, which just makes it boing back and forth sporadically. It’s very scary. Do you want to look down?
NUMBER 3: I don’t think I want to look down.
NUMBER 0: You’re over 40 feet in the air, and the only thing keeping this catwalk from splitting in half under its weight and falling is some subpar cables. You’re not exactly a short distance from the ground.
NUMBER 3: Don’t look down!
NUMBER 1: I think you’re going to look down.
NUMBER 0: Wanna roll integrity to not look down?
NUMBER My integrity is 6!
NUMBER 0: Then you shouldn’t have any problem.
NUMBER 3: Agh!
Number 3 rolls a successful 7.
NUMBER 3: Win!
NUMBER 0: You don’t look down. You maintain your illusion of safety as your eyes navigate the walls.
NUMBER 3: Can I even see the doors in any detail?
NUMBER 0: No, you cannot. The square footage of this facility is huge.
NUMBER 3: Argh. Then… I wanna just go looking door to door to find these guys.
NUMBER 0: You tread carefully down the walkway, gripping the handrails as you continue shaking it more with each step. You’re quickly met with an intersection, with one bridge leading forward and around the wall, another going left and up a flight of stairs, and another to the right leading to another intersection with more paths to a workshop area, a ladder, the wall on that side, more stairs, and more intersections. And the more you try to make sense or order of this labyrinth, the more lost you become. Roll me brain activity real quick.
NUMBER 3: Oh boy. Roll me a 7.
Number 3 rolls a 7.
NUMBER 3: Thank you! Perfect!
NUMBER 0: Right on the money. So looking through the inextricable maze lying in every direction, you manage to trace an easy path to check at least most of the rooms up this first wall in front of you. You can’t see all the way up, but you have a decent view of about the first half of this complex. And it goes up a dizzying amount of stories. So you start at the level you’re currently standing, rushing ahead down the catwalk, trembling a little less the closer you get to the wall. You look at the first room, which you’re just able to push open easily. Nobody inside. You run back the way you came, around more intersections and turns to find the second one, also spotting nothing through the window peephole. And you turn around again, and go up a ladder to the next level.
NUMBER 2: Wait, Baslar said that Rob could spot the workers through a window. So you would need to be looking for doors that have windows.
NUMBER 4: Also the door is locked.
NUMBER 2: Yeah. So you could narrow search down to doors with locks, and windows.
NUMBER 0: Good idea. Does Rob have that idea too?
NUMBER 2: Are you going to intelligence check him again?
NUMBER 3: Grr. I’ll get it. You’ll see.
Number 3 rolls an unsuccessful 3.
NUMBER 3: Fuckdammit!
NUMBER 2: Looks like neither of us are allowed to have good ideas.
NUMBER 1: And he was doing so good.
NUMBER 0: Rob just goes breathlessly, checking inside of every room along this wall that he navigates too. It’s constant running up and down ramps and ladders and stairs, turns and backpedals, pushing open or peeking inside room after room, and each one gives you no luck.
NUMBER 2: Oh, also, if Baslar is afraid of heights, then he must not have climbed very far up before he found the hostages. They should be close by.
NUMBER 0: Another good idea. Does this go over Rob’s head or into it?
NUMBER 3: Oh, come on.
Number 3 rolls another 7.
NUMBER 3: Into it, baby!
NUMBER 0: Okay. Once you finish searching every room about four stories up, you realize you’re plenty high enough that Baslar would have never thought to go higher. You feel safe running to search the next wall to your right.
NUMBER 1: Baslar’s right below you, why doesn’t he just fucking say where the workers are?
NUMBER 0: Good question. Rob, you hesitated to look down earlier. How about now? How about… actually, why don’t you roll against your integrity score? That’d be 4 or higher.
NUMBER 3: Fighting against my own integrity to look down at Baslar. This is interesting.
Number 3 rolls a 9.
NUMBER 3: Integrity = shattered.
NUMBER 0: Rough. With hardly any hesitation, you look right over the edge of the railing, struggling to find Baslar’s figure between all the walkways as you realize just how far from the ground you are and the vertigo sets in. That—is going to be depth perception.
NUMBER 3: Which is… a 5. Cool!
Number 3 rolls a perfect 5.
NUMBER 3: Phew! So many near misses.
NUMBER 0: You find Baslar, not by spotting his figure alone, but by seeing an active swordfight down on the ground. It’s another wave of goons, but you can’t tell how many this time. And that point, you have to whip your back up before you start freaking out.
NUMBER 1: Now he starts rattling the walkway and falls off the edge.
NUMBER 2: Just how high up does this facility go?
NUMBER 0: Well, you’re on the fourth story of this catwalk labyrinth, and you can still only see cracks of the ceiling above.
NUMBER 4: That’s fucked.
NUMBER 0: And Rob. You turn around to go searching down the next wall… but there’s movement on the catwalks below you. And you lock eyes with a Sararongan at the bottom level.
NUMBER 2: Knew it!
NUMBER 0: He shouts at you, “C’mere!” and sprints out of view.
NUMBER 3: Fuck! Search quicker!
NUMBER 0: You fucking dip out of there.
NUMBER 3: Take a bunch of twists and turns! Try to lose him!
NUMBER 0: Roll brain activity!
Number 3 rolls a quick 4.
NUMBER 3: No!
NUMBER 0: You zip away! You take the most complicated route to the wall that you can, going up a ladder, turning right, turning around, running through a workshop area, going down a ladder, turning left, going up a ramp, turning right, U-turning, turning left, and you somehow find yourself right back at the room that you opened last on the wrong wall!
NUMBER 3: Ahh!
NUMBER 0: The Sararongan is nowhere to be seen, but you hear the banging footsteps echo around you!
NUMBER 3: Go up! All the way!
NUMBER 1: Hide in a room, you idiot!
NUMBER 0: You run up stairs! You look for another set of stairs close by! You dash down more catwalks and more intersections aimlessly until you find the path to those stairs! You run like wild! You keep going higher! You look for every ramp, stair flight, or ladder you can find, but a bunch of them only lead back down!
NUMBER 4: Weren’t there elevators?
NUMBER 0: No time for elevators! You’re running for your life! Now roll stamina!
NUMBER 3: Shit! My stamina is 2!
Number 3 rolls another 4.
NUMBER 3: AAHH!
NUMBER 0: You get worn down by the excessive running! You don’t run very often, this is straining you quite a lot!
NUMBER 3: Ouch!
NUMBER 0: You stumble while you’re sprinting up a ramp and catch your foot on a bar holding up a handrail and fall over. And with all that commotion you and the Sararongan have been making, the catwalk network is fucking violently careening back and forth. The bridge that you’re on sways hard to the side, and you start sliding off the edge. Roll… improvisation!
NUMBER 3: Okay! That’s an easy one!
Number 3 rolls a 10.
NUMBER 3: Critical hit!
NUMBER 0: You catch yourself on the edge of the bridge just before you fall off. You’re dangling over a full box room, almost 20 feet below. There’s four cables holding it up like an elevator, plus the connected catwalks.
NUMBER 1: Hide! You fool!
NUMBER 3: Is the guy anywhere nearby?
NUMBER 0: You hear a lot of creaking from the catwalk structure shaking. If there are footsteps closeby, you can’t hear them.
NUMBER 3: Then, uh… yeah! I’ll hide in that place!
NUMBER 2: Wait—
NUMBER 0: You let go of the bridge and crash right on the ceiling of that room, causing a loud boom.
NUMBER 3: Oh, wait, shit!
NUMBER 1: Fucking idiot! Do something correctly!
NUMBER 3: Just get inside!
NUMBER 0: You jump off the roof and slam onto a catwalk. You rush to open the door, but it’s locked.
NUMBER 3: Wait! Try the key!
NUMBER 0: You stick the key Baslar gave you into the door lock, turn it—and the door opens. You go inside and slam the door shut. This room is a bloodied up meat-chopping chamber tightly packed with tools and cutting platforms, and tied up under the tables are about a dozen of the slaughterhouse workers.
NUMBER 3: Hah! That was easy.
NUMBER 2: How the fuck…?
NUMBER 3: Untie them quickly, maybe they can fight and help defend me!
NUMBER 0: You drag one guy out from under the tables, who’s trying to yell out of his taped mouth. But you see that his arms and legs have been tied up with steel wire, not so easily untied or cut.
NUMBER 2: Look for wire cutters, or something they would use to cut bone with.
NUMBER 3: Who the fuck would cut bone with wire cutters?!
NUMBER 2: Not all bones require a saw!
NUMBER 0: As you deliberate and look around for anything to cut those wire restraints with, and as the room wobbles back and forth, you hear those banging footsteps again. And the door that you left unlocked gets thrown open.
NUMBER 3: Ack! Jesus Christ!
NUMBER 1: Literally useless.
NUMBER 0: You are face to face with a Sararongan wielding a bone saw, and nobody to protect you.
NUMBER 3: Baslar! We need a deus ex machina!
NUMBER 1: You have to fucking explode him!
NUMBER 2: Grab a bigger saw!
NUMBER 3: No!
NUMBER 4: There’s no other way out of this!
NUMBER 1: Blow him up!
NUMBER 2: First rule when you’re left with no option but to fight: don’t hold back!
NUMBER 3: But the workers!
NUMBER 4: Aim the explosion away from them!
NUMBER 1: Boom boom! Boom!
NUMBER 2: Show no hesitation!
NUMBER 3: I don’t wanna!
NUMBER 4: This is your fucking prologue! Do not die!
NUMBER 0: He’s getting closer!
NUMBER 1: Do it!
NUMBER 2: Strike first! Strike hard!
NUMBER 3: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Number 3 makes an explosion with his arms, with a sound effect to match.
NUMBER 1: Guh!
NUMBER 0: You black out as the mechanical engine in your chest roars active. You’re blasted back as an earth-shattering—Slams fists on the table—fires out of you. You see the Sararongan in front of you reduced to a fine mist before the only light in the room is shattered, and violent tremors are sent throughout the whole volatile catwalk system. And as you lie half-conscious against the wall, those tremors get worse, and you hear the cables holding up the room snap apart, and the whole room tilts backwards. You hear crashes, you hear screaming, you feel your gravity begin to cease, you slam into one surface and then into another and back into the other, you hear metal rattling and banging and scraping all over the place, you feel yourself getting sick again—and then there’s one last crash of the room before things finally come still. And when you wake up, you’re lying upside down, on the ceiling. The two doors have completely broken off, and the outside light illuminates a gigantic fucking mess around you; tools everywhere, tattered chunks of plastic from the walls and the tables, a big fucking splatter of blood and guts in the corner, two severed legs, chunks of fat and bone from dead animals, and those dozen workers, sprawled across the floor, looking all fucked up and rattled from that chaos, but otherwise non-fatally injured.
NUMBER 3: Oh. Oh god.
NUMBER 1: Thank you for that.
NUMBER 4: It was for the greater good.
NUMBER 3: It don’t be feeling that way.
NUMBER 0: A silhouette peers in from a door hole. You hear Baslar’s voice say, “Sir! Is you alright?”
NUMBER 3: I just groan at him.
NUMBER 0: “Not worry! Can you stand? Is any bones broke?”
NUMBER 3: Uh… is any bones broke?
NUMBER 0: You feel deathly sore, but not very internally damaged.
NUMBER 4: Oo, did he ragdoll after exploding?
NUMBER 0: Quite possibly. Maybe the shock of getting blasted back also twitches his neck.
NUMBER 3: That’s handy. I should’ve written that down.
NUMBER 0: We’ll assume it’s true. And I’m going to speed through this last bit, because we have been here quite a while. So you’re not terribly injured, and you eventually get yourself back up and climb out of that room. And you see that it took the whole trajectory down. You crashed through several walkways and sent pieces of them falling to the floor, and you smashed into a big silo thing as you made the fateful 40-foot drop, which seems to have saved your landing. But you and the workers all get out, most of them with pretty bad gashes or broken bones. But there’s only one casualty, and it’s the one painted on the wall.
Number 3 whines.
NUMBER 1: Get over it.
NUMBER 0: There’s three extra dead bodies lying by the entrance that you see, all with wounds from Baslar’s hell sword. None of the workers are saying anything to you as they’re led to safety outside. And outside, there is already teams of armed police and ambulances ready. The workers get escorted away to the ambulance trucks, while you and Baslar are taken away by the police for questioning as teams sweep through the slaughterhouse complex. You get driven away, and with that—
NUMBER 1: We’re done?
NUMBER 0: We’re done! That’s a wrap on Session 1! All characters have been introduced! Christ, that took a while.
NUMBER 4: Woo!
NUMBER 3: Damn. I thought we were going to sit here forever.
NUMBER 0: Well, consider this to just be our evening sleep break. And we’ll be right back at it the next day.
NUMBER 2: Hold up. So just allow me to clear up the record for a second. So I had the idea there to only check the lower floors because Baslar likely wouldn’t have looked higher for the employees, and you gave Rob an intelligence check for it, seemingly bestowing it a degree of legitimacy, signaling that it was the correct approach. And yet when Rob went running away from that guy and climbed all the way up in that facility, he still found the employees’ room up there. So if that wasn’t the correct approach and wouldn’t have revealed the employees, then what the hell was the intelligence check for? How can you succeed and intelligence check and still get it wrong?
NUMBER 0: Well, you don’t know just how high up Rob really was when he fell onto the room with the workers. He was running quite aimlessly. Maybe succeeding an intelligence check just doesn’t guarantee success at all, and only does give legitimacy to ideas that sound correct. Or maybe I just twisted reality to make things easier for Rob because we were time-crunched. Who knows? I just don’t want any one of you to think that you’re in control.
NUMBER 1: Bitch.
NUMBER 0: And with that, I will bid the gang ado, for the first time. And tomorrow, maybe even our heroes’ storylines will… intertwine in some way. We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, farewell!
NUMBER 2: Go fuck yourself.
NUMBER 4: We have a really long campaign ahead of us.
•••••