Lair of the Lamb session three:

Burial by sea

Lenny hefts Battie onto his shoulder. The Lamb's great bulk, near to a ton of meat and bone and chitin, slammed her against the wall; she's hit her head and isn't moving. He and Alec flee north, up the hall back towards the landing, as the lamb sways, swinging its head back and forth, trying to dislodge the golden helm muzzling its snout, holding back gnashing teeth.
Gwyn and Kurt are still right next to it. They could try to run, but Kurt's too slow to have much chance of making it out of its reach. One of the Lamb's eyes are visible, glaring hatefully at the light of Gwyn's torch.
It turns to Kurt, and prepares to slam him.

Dramatis Personae:

MEANWHILE, SOMEWHERE ELSE

MILO wakes up. He's in a strange situation, all tied up and bagged in the pitch-black. He feels awful. He's severely dehydrated. He's lying on a pile of similarly restrained rurals. He's in no immediate danger, and so begins gnawing at the ropes around his wrists...

MEANWHILE, SOMEWHERE NOT-QUITE-AS-ELSE

Milo has painstakingly freed his hands, taking care not to mar his perfect skin. It's radiant, you know, not that you can see that right now of course, haha, he explains to the person he's sitting on. They've been trying to say something back, but it's lost amid the pile of bodies they're stuck in. Pity. By now, most of the pile has been elbowed awake, and they're in the process of tearing free from their bonds and/or flopping out of the bowl and giving themselves bruises. Everyone perks up at the sound of footsteps.

Who's there, says Milo.
Oh! There's more of you! says Kes.
What, says Milo.

Negotiations continue in this vein. In the fullness of time, Milo is unbound and brought up to speed.

They decide to make their way back into the dungeon in hopes of regrouping with the party.

Extra Personas Dramatis:

Notable spares:

Alec could run away, right now. He'd stay whole, at least for the moment.
But Kurt and Gwyn are assets, and in any case Gwyn has the torch, and being trapped in the dark means death. (And he'd be abandoning them)
Alec turns around, and charges back into the fray.

Kurt eyes the beast. The golden helm of sensory deprivation was a thing of beauty, worth as much as he's earned in his life. The gold will still have value, but the helm is a wreck, stretching and splitting around the Lamb's straining jaws. But while it's there, it looks like an opportunity; an anvil to his hammer, a bell to ring and stun the monster long enough to escape.

He raises his hammer, aims, but before he can strike the Lamb is already upon him.
It presses into him with all of its weight, like a cow leaning on a fence, a wall of flesh implacable as the tide, seeking to force him to the ground, where he'll be broken as sand breaks before the sea. He'll make a good snack. Mincemeat. (Smash burger.)

This about Kurt Hammer: He is not quick. He is not nimble. He forges and repairs farm equipment: he is no smith of Myth that alloys sunlight into shining swords. He has no special heritage to speak of. No dragons in the family, no glowing eyes or charged-up misty steps refreshing at dawn.
What he did receive from his father - and what his father received in turn, back and back to the first of the line, of whom no trace or memory remains save that blood which yet courses through Kurt's veins - are these:

1. Long arms.
2. A broad back.
3. Enough food to grow into them.

(Food enough even in the lean years, saved and scrounged by a father who knew full well the tragedy of a stunted child.)

There are many things Kurt is not. But as far as humans go, he is really quite strong.

The Lamb pushes. Kurt pushes back. For just a moment, the Lamb moves.
The hammer falls, as it fell the day the first man split flint with a rock.
The Lamb's head rings like a church bell, and Gwyn drives her dagger between its ribs.

Alec adjusts his Rankings.

He then runs in and smashes the insensate Lamb with his Crab-arm.
Something in the Lamb cracks, and it sways.

It does not fall.

The Lamb, for its part, has inherited several things.

"Father", it cries, as the golden helm splits and tears about its widening jaw; "Father, FATHER-"

The peasants wonder for a moment whether this monstrosity is a person, and then - with nervous glances at each other - decide that now is the time to flee. As the Lamb casts about with pain and fury, its foes have already fled down the corridor, their torchlight disappearing around the bend.

The fodder will pay for this.

Lennie had an idea. There's a storage cupboard in the middle of this hallway. It's where he left the chest. It's a perfect hiding spot! Right beneath the Lamb's nose! It'd never guess it! So he snuck in, with Battie still over his shoulder.

He tunes out the roaring and clanging and screaming outside as he checks on Battie in the enclosed space. He tries not to knee the gong as he checks on Battie.
She's not doing great. Her breathing's faint, and he feels great welt upon her head. She needs - he's not sure, but water probably can't hurt, right. But he can't get out right now -

Just after someone out there starts calling for their dad (must be nice to have one), he hears footsteps running back past the door. After some calculation, he slips picks Battie back up, and slips out the doorway to follow them.

IN WHICH A PAIR OF SPARE PEASANTS DISCOURSE IN THE DARK

Alec, Gwyn, and Kurt are disturbed to see Lennie coming up from behind them. What...? That kid ain't right. Battie's still out of it, and deteriorating, so they hustle back to the Fountain room.

(They are followed by Kes and Milo (seeing their torch flickering in the distance), who are followed by the peasant crowd.)

By the cool water, Lennie tends to Battie. He manages to bring her back to wakefullness, but she's concussed and disoriented.
As they kneel by the water, they hear footsteps, and finally all of the living peasants are united.

In all the confusion, the torch has started to burn low; less than an half an hour of light remains. They must find more.

Annie steps up and takes Battie's place in the marching order, and the party marches onward. South, through the pit room (Hi, says Akina), then East.
Lennie had glimpsed this room through the murk. He'd seen an oversized crab; up close, it's revealed to be part of a mural. A noblewoman tends to a crab on her lap, grooming it as one would a cat. Strange. Gwyn befriends a rat in the corner. She now has one (1) rat sitting atop her head ala Ratatouille. Annie touches the mural. Nothing happens.

There's a door east, but it's locked. Down the passage to the south, then. Another room, another mural, this time of the god Vandoh (mathematics and wisdom, worshipped by the White Temple that threw everyone down here) standing inside an impossible abacus, calculating something. Strange.
Annie does not immediately touch it, because the ceiling is on the brink of collapse. A wooden pike, wedged upright in the center of the room, is all that holds it up. The party immediately considers turning this room into a trap for the Lamb, with what rope they have, but their torch is guttering and nobody wants to fight it in the dark. Kurt sacrifices a bag, some hay, and some rope to craft a stopgap torch-like-object. Annie pokes the mural. Nothing. There's only one way onwards, so the party goes south down another corridor.

A third mural-room, this time of a city beneath the waves. There's a rotten door to the east, easy to pull off its hinges, and a corridor west, and - a great crack in the southern wall, just large enough that a skinny person could squeeze through it. Annie touches the mural for good measure (still nothing), then dives into the crack and wriggles forward. After a few sharp turns, she sees sunlight filtering through a fist-fized hole, and hears a human voice -

"CHICKEN! GET YER CHICKEN! LIVE OR FRIED! BUY A LEG, GET THE FOOT FER FREE!"

She sees one of Lon Barago's great plazas, and the back of a chicken seller and his cart. She's peeking out of a fist-sized hole in a wall, atop which the White Temple looms. (Lon Barago is built on a hillside, and such verticality is common). Annie sticks her arm through, and calls out to the merchant, to his great shock and consternation.

After making several warding signs against evil (this disembodied arm/wall-ghost must count, right), the man introduces himself as Danjo, and is quickly consumed by his second strongest instinct behind fear - greed. He has several goods for sale, and tries to sell them all to Annie for twenty times market price. (Kes can confirm that ten silver pieces is ridiculous for a chicken). Most importantly, he has candles. Precious light.

Unfortunately, the party has no valuables to trade with. Annie tries to pass herself off as the servant of a nobleman from the plains surrounding Lon Barago (who will surely reward Danjo handsomely for the safekeeping of his maid!), but the chicken man ain't havin' it.

Annie swaps out with Milo, who has a cunning plan.

"Hey, man. Let's have a wager. Knife-paper-scroll. I win, you give me one of them candles."
(The arm poking from the wall points in a direction not completely opposite of the candles).

Danjo looks awfully tempted. He likes a good wager. Maybe this guy's alright. "...And if I win? What do I get?"

Without hesitation, very calmly, Milo says "My arm".

Danjo adjusts his Rankings. This guy is unhinged. "You're unhinged", he says, but then - well - it is quite a nice arm - good meat, radiant skin - and what if this is a spirit or ghost or hundred-armed demigod or something, don't want to annoy them -

"Best of three."

Round one: Danjo, rock. Milo, scroll. Milo wins.
Round two: Danjo rolls a chicken-bone die and consults it. Scroll.
Milo picks knife.

Clutching his candle, Milo emerges from the crack. An hour of light. Worth the risk.
Without any more valuables to trade, and with Danjo unwilling to gamble more, the party continues on. They've been lucky; the Underworld's whispers are not yet too near. So they remove the rotten door from its hinges, and hand it to Jack sparrow and two more extras, to carry between them.

The next room is bare save for a door east, a passageway south, and a pile of mould in the shape of a body curled up on the floor. As the party contemplate poking the mould-body, the shadows seem to grow in their flickering candlelight. The clock is ticking down and the Lamb grows near.
They hoof it back to the collapsing room, tactical door in tow.
They have a plan, this time.

As they arrive, the tension peaks, the clock ticks over, and with grunting, shuffling, loping, half-congealed blood oozing down its side from Gwyn's dagger-wound, the Lamb emerges from the nothern dark. The fodder hurt it, and it will make them hurt in turn.

Three spares wield the door. Of two, we will not speak further. The third is named Jack Sparrow. (The rest of our heroes valiantly flee out to the north, out from under the buckling ceiling). As the Lamb charges, swinging around the pike, Jack and his buccaneers heft the mould-rotten door.

A tree once grew in a copse near a river. It drank the light, drank the air, drank the water, dug deep and reached high. A gang of crows frequented its boughs. It developed a knot in which a squirrel slept.
One day someone took an axe to it and cut it to pieces. Some of those pieces were planks, and some of those planks became were cut to size and bound together into a door, and it was brought down into the dark and cold and there it sat for an interminable age as the Dread Fungus gnawed at it. It wishes it could see the sun one last time.

The door tumbles through the air and crashes into the pike, snapping it at the haft. The ceiling comes crashing down.
The door-wielders were prepared for this, and turn to flee as soon as their hands leave the wood. Two of them make it out cleanly. But Jack Sparrow was furthest into the room, and a stone hits him on the head, and he stumbles, and then the deluge takes him.

But as the falling rocks crack his bones, as they shatter the door, so too do they rain upon the Lamb. The blows it took earlier weakened it, and with a crashing like the wrath of the upper air, and a final
"FAAAAAAAAAAAATHEEEEEERRRRRRRR-"
it is dead and buried.
The earth quakes, and the rubble settles.

The door goes to Heaven.

The party say a few words for Jack Sparrow, then venture on. The Abacus Room is full of rubble, impassable, so they head south and then west, reaching a chamber holding a torch, a crawl-way north, and sarcophagus inscribed with:

"Shadrakul, who will not meet her apprentice in this life."

She lands on something soft. For a moment, all is dark and still. Then, a dim, sourceless light fills the room. A tiny cavern hewn from the rock. There's a skeleton in the corner. Ten feet above, she sees the open trapdoor through which she fell; she landed on a stack of quite fine-looking rugs. There's a skeleton in the corner. The trapdoor shuts again as the party re-removes the Sarcophagus lid. The rugs have designs similar to the ones in - okay she looks at the skeleton.

It's wearing a dark robe, and is sitting cross-legged with its back leaning against the wall. It's not... moving... at all; it could well be an anatomical skeleton, save there's no sign of wire or such holding its joints together.
On one of its knees, precariously balanced, is a beautiful gold-and-crystal cup studded with gems. One of its arms is outstretched, holding a book made of black, polished iron. A chain is woven through its spine.

Annie has dreamt of something along these lines (well, maybe she'd been thinking the witch she learned from would have some more... skin...) for many years, and scrambles forward. But as she reaches out for the book, a skeletal snake emerges from the - still unmoving - skeleton's robe, and curls around the chalice. It cannot hiss, for it lacks flesh, but the grinding and clicking of its bones are close enough.

Annie backs off, bows, and grants it some of - what does she have on her - nothing - she tears out some of her hair and offers it to the skeleton snake. It looks at the strands. It looks back at her. It pseudo-hisses, but more quietly.

She carefully, slowly reaches out, and takes hold of the book.

As she does, the trapdoor behind her swings open, and the sourceless light cuts out as the candle's flicker reaches down.

When Annie looks back at the skeleton, its arm is retracted, and the book is hers.