The Resolute Brothers by Alexander Aspit
1918
So all those dig applications Professor Semenov wrote while coked up paid off, as the University of the Steppe has approved funds and grad students for Semenov's excavation of the spinal catastrophism in the underground frontier near the near and under the Silent Homes.
This brought along with it a complication. The dig site was in territory disputed between the Gay Nazis and the Gopniks, two gangs whose first impressions of the party were not good ones. In fact, they were quite lethal. Realizing that an agreement must be reached with one of them in opposition to other in order to provided security for the dig site. Knowing that Germanic conquest of the Rodina would have apocalyptic results in the Noosphere, Semenov elects to parlay with the Gopniks.
Knowing that he will need security, Semenov calls on his fellows. Unfortunately, it is a Monday, and only Spartak responds, and only because he is passed out on the table in the Neo-Nazbol dining hall and someone eating around him answers. Upon being awakened, Spartak readily agrees to help gain allies against the homofascists.
Using some grant funds devoted to security to fill the back of his VAZ hatchback with cartons of cigarettes, and the pair drive off to a gopnik bloc party to begin negotiations. After talking to a Gopnik of note by the name of Dima, a deal is struck and the bloc party lets out a roar of approval as the smokes begin to passed around.
Kosmos Blue
Cosmonauts do not smoke!
Leaving behind the a growing cloud of smoke at the center of the Silent Homes, Semenov returns Spartak to the Shkola Granat and the two agree to meet at the dig site, with Spartak approaching from the club to the west and Semenov coming from the apartment entrance to the east.
Holding up a bottle of Stolichnaya at the bar of Shkola Granat, Spartak offers $50 to whoever wants to fight some fascists. Lev the Cthonicist, Marina the Pyromancer, and Oksana the Arachnophile readily volunteer. After each doing a line laid out by Lev, the Nazbol occults and Stalinist Ape-man venture through the Shkola Granat's rear entrance into the sewers.
Oksana's Delving Gear
The quartet make their way through the sewer without incident until the arrive at the lair of Schnappi. Though he won initiative, Spartak ordered his compatriots across the chamber while he attempted to drive off Schnappi.
This turned out to be a stupid fucking idea.
As he had done so before, Schanppi rolled a natural 20, immediately doing damage to flesh and biting off Spartak's ring and pinky fingers and a good deal of his hand. Deciding that Schnappi was too dangerous to be allowed to live, Spartak and the three occultists let out their fury and finally Spartak crushed the dread alligator's head. Marina and Lev began taking Schnappi apart, talking about alligator skin boots, while Oksana tearfully staunched Spartak's bleeding with her webs.
Press F for Schnappi
[So fun fact, I planned to have Schnappi flee after receiving some damage because I wanted him to be a recurring enemy. Spartak chose not to use his three free attacks because he didn't want to kill Schnappi while the rest of the party was away. And so because we both wished to keep Schnappi alive, he had to die.]
Deciding to abandon his pre-emptive attack on the Gay Nazis, the beleaguered Spartak made his way to the Bone Zone to meet Semenov, who then drove him to Dr. Galdikas so two of Schnappi's digits could be stitched onto his ruined hand.
And so we now fast-forward to the weekend when when the entire party is able to reconvene.
It's only a week until Ramon Mercader Day, and Commissioner Nikitan of the Militsiya is taking this opportunity to unless the cops and to crack down on littering, loitering, graffiti, and the homeless. Aleksandr looks out of his hotel window to see militsiya smashing up an unauthorized art installation and bolts out the door. A few moments later, Gavril see Aleksandr burst into the room holding a large shrine to Santa Muerte. Gavril baulks at the prospect of sharing a hotel room with a skeleton statue, but Aleksandr impresses upon him its necessity and that she doesn't always demand animal sacrifices.
Gavril is not a fan of Aleksandr's redecoration of the hotel bathroom
Spartak gets a call from his old roommate, the Israeli backpacking hippie Abram, saying that no one has returned from the expedition to the passages south of the Complex. Among the missing are the group founder Gennady Chupov and the young metro worker Artyom, and the treasurer of the Excavators, Tatiana Zhutova, is offering a $1500 reward for a rescue mission. Abram says he's going one way or another, but that he'd feel a lot better to have Spartak and his friends were coming along too.
"We are waiting for you day and night, soldier!"
The sign reads "Soviet Prisoners of War"
Viktor Ivanov 1945
The party gathers in the old meeting spot for the Excavators of the Underground Earth, a stuffy meeting room in the basement of the State Library. There they see the harried Zhutova pouring over maps of the Underground with the big Finn, Aarno. She then explains to them the route to take, and where the missing party was headed, the newly discovered Protoplasmic Generation Lab #1. She promises $1500 for safely escorted the lost explorers, or positively identifying their bodies.
Clean water for our Aquifers!
1980
Looking at the maps reminds Dr Galdikas of the lambent blue water he took a sample of in the Silo, and so he takes this time to phone one of his crew, Pierre, the Organ Harvester working at Dr Galdikas's homeless shelter. Promising to run a battery of spectrograms and tests, up to and including its effects on humans, Pierre says "okay, love you," as he compulsively does when he hangs up the phone.
With their affairs now in order, the party make their way through the Gastev station entrance into the Gulag Mines with Abram and Aarno in tow. Upon making their entrance into the second chamber, the party finally decides to explore the south-western chamber where they find an old ventilation system, which when activated, cycles out any and all poisoned air from the mines. Something that could have been useful every other time they've been in the mines. The party decides to also explore the unexplored chamber in the north east corner where they find a water pump capable of draining the flooded chamber leading to the Silo, though Dr Galdikas finds re-activating it beyond his capability at this time.
The fan is a friend of labor, always keep the fan running
Returning to the chamber where they had their first ever taste of arachnid combat, the party gazes onto the downwards slopping shaft marked with long rusted signs marking Soviet state secrets and forbidding unauthorized entrance on pain of death. They pass the threshold and make their descent.
The Complex Beckons
The air grows denser as they descend, stale and tasting of copper. After what feels like hours, they arrive into the first chamber of the Complex. In an ancient chamber, they see still brilliantly colored mosaics depicting a civilization of bipedal serpents, first subjugating furry hominids and transforming them into pale creatures with elongated skulls.
As they enter into the chamber to the south, they see another set of mosaics, this time depicting serpent scientist-priests pulling down strange beings from the stars, though the portions of the mosaic depicting what happened next are in ruins. It is here they also see much more evidence of Soviet excavation. On the floor to the west is a think blast door blown off its hinges, with rusted signs referring to Machine #2. The party elects to investigate and are greeted with an almost perfectly spherical vitrified chamber, with the silhouettes of several people burnt into the glass and indication of collapse connected chambers. Upon realizing no one has brought a Geiger counter, Dr Galdikas suggests they leave this room immediately and continue south and west.
Monumental Halls
Upon entering the next chamber, they see what looks like a proper archaeological dig of long destroyed domiciles, with neatly written notes and section markers. They follow a clearly Soviet dug tunnel south into a chamber full of neatly laid out skeletons, with signs indicating that "subterranean hominid skeletons MUST be studied in situ. Do not remove any sample from the site under any circumstances." Galdikas and Semenov are particularly interested in this discovery, but agree that they ought follow the instructions left behind.
The party is greeted by something even more alarming upon approaching the chamber, as its entrance is festooned in signs warning of "unmeasurable phenomena," "hostile thoughtform," and "under no circumstances are individuals to think about stairs when in the altar chamber."
With great trepidation, the party enters the sacrificial altar room made of the blackest basalt. Upon a plinth, a shining and bejeweled sacrificial dagger, one that has stood there unmoved for millennia, including decades of Soviet excavation. So naturally, Spartak tries to grab it, and raises the ire of the entity residing here.
Spartak's face immediately begins to blacken and burn, as a thieves mark brands itself on his face. This curse requires him to explain to anyone who asks about this brand that he is a thief, but seeing as Spartak was raised in a society with a radically different conception of property, so when asked he must self harm to relieve the building pain in his skull.
"Hands Off"
Incited by firebrand "fathers," they can't stop looking for holes in hearts and souls
Within the "spiritual" cover and binding they've hidden ideological poison!
Soviet Anti-Religion Poster, 1984
Around this time Abram pulls himself out of his shroom haze and gives the team instructions where to go from here. They belly crawl through a small cavern and emerge on a dais with two aggressive vipers that they quickly make short work of. Dr Galdikas is able to recover the venom glands of the one Aleksandr managed to bisect with his scorpion blade, as the other had its skull crushed by Spartak's gun-club. From here they make the difficult climb up a dead inclinator towards a light at its top.
They emerge into a large, domed chamber with one of the greatest oddities seen yet; a fully functional concrete clinic, warm light emanating from its windows and pleasant music playing from within. Abram explains that this is the Polyclinic.
Upon entering, they are greeted by a pristine waiting room with colorful portraits of cheery residents of Pyongyang. Behind the desk, a Korean woman in a pristine white nurses uniform sits, her face transforming from a sneer to glowing, beneficent and hospitable smile. She welcomes the party and introduces herself as Nurse Ok Bon-hwa before turning to a door to shriek something in Korean. Another Korean man in white scrubs emerges and they begins screaming at each other in Korean with murderous rage before both put on that same glowing smile and ask if they'd like green tea.
Let us improve the hygienic and anti-epidemic measures
along with curative and preventive ones
and increase the production of medicines!
Taking a moment to rest in the pleasant waiting room of the Polyclinic, Dr Galdikas decides that perhaps the resident doctor might be able to help with Spartak's malady. It isn't long before Dr. Orlova emerges from the backroom to inspect the new meat. An older woman whose face is half hidden behind a surgical mask spreads her four arms in greeting, large blue eyes blinking in two of her palms.
The doctor will see you now
After the doctors exchange pleasantries, Dr Orlova examines Spartak intently, fascinated by what she sees. When asked about the strange fractal burns of Spartak's cheek, Dr Orlova matter-of-factly tells them both that it's a curse, and thus not her department. Spartak, disgusted by this ridiculous superstition, calls her a quack and storms out.
Realizing that the matter must be explained to Spartak in terms he would accept, Semenov informs him that through certain reactionary symbolism illnesses of the mind can be transferred. Diagnosing him with sluggish schizophrenia and warns him that the methods of curing it will have to utilize the seemingly reactionary and obscurantist, as sometimes one must use poison to fight poison. Satisfied with this rational and materialist explanation, Spartak happily agrees to be taken into Semenov's care and wait for his research to reveal the necessary treatment.
Exiting the comfort of the climate controlled Polyclinic, the party makes their way through a passage to the south, the stone eventually giving way to concrete and rusted steel. A sign indicates the rear entrance to the Protoplasmic Generation Laboratory #1.
Pushing past the opened bulk head, they arrive in a well equipped chemical storage area, massive tanks of esoteric chemical combinations hooking to pumps and pipes into the ceiling. Moving into an adjacent control room they see banks of pressure gauges and switches for different chemical pumps marked things like "growth stimulus," "sedative," and "agitation" as well as a suite of controls for different electrodes. The move through a bulkhead to the south marked "Observation" and very quickly realize what these controls refer to.
Walking out onto a large space with comfortable seats, telephones, and several old video cameras facing a large plexiglass window, the party see it. Below in a concrete pits with a single tunnel leading out of it south is the mother bulk, a quivering and amorphous mass flesh and protoplasm, extending and retracting questing limbs, eyes and mouths floating across its surface. Suffice to say, everyone wishes to get the fuck out of there and go east through a door marked "Offices."
World of Adventures magazine
Issue No. 3, 1925
In the center of a utterly ruined set of cubicles is the ruined corpse of a man, crushed and burned by acids. Across the room on the Eastern wall is a thick metal door marked "security." Investigating the door, they hear the sounds of movement on the other side and then hear the voices of Gennady and Artyom from behind the door. Apparently they've taken refuge here after being attacked by the shoggoths, but have been unable to open the door. Combing Dr Galdikas's technical knowledge and Spartak's strength, they force the security door open and are greeted by the relieved pair.
Taking a brief moment to explore the security room before departing, they find on the opposite, eastern wall are numerous signs written in symbols they cannot understand. Talking with Gennady and Artyom, they discover that those are warning signs marking the containment area of Subject 86, codenamed Meduza. Apparently this entity is able to make any and all writing illegible in a certain radius, and due to a mismeasurement by the construction crew that field occasionally extends to the warning signs when it moves to the western most part of the containment field beyond the door.
Reading through a few of the files, they discover that Subject 86 was marked for destruction due to both being extremely dangerous and having no practical value (though a plan to move Subject 86 and placing it under the New York Stock Exchange to cause a financial panic was floated, it was eventually deemed infeasible due to the difficulty of keeping the Meduza contained.)
With the rescue completed, the extremely tired party returns to the surface.
No comments:
Post a Comment