Call of the Nethderdeep volume 8

We meet a guard with a hexagon pendant, who tells us a bit about the demons that come from inside the tower. He tells us something of a hexagonal soul eating god, which he is wearing a pendant of. El Cato comes back at this point. 

Meow. 

Woolf wants to interview the guard for researching fanfiction. The guard tries to put them off saying I am just a regular guard, why don't you interview the task hand. The guard says he came here only a month ago, and that Werin Thelis has been there for years. 

The guy consults someone, and throws the box through a portal. El Cato asks for a treat, and Rangu gives him a cracker that looks like a playing card. 

The soldiers roll out, the armour starts making the sound of crickets. That is why the locals refer to them as cricks. 

All of us head back to the ready room. We run into Aloysia Telfan who asks us what happened to us. We do not give details. The injured go to the infirmiry and get healed up. Rangu writes a message for El Cato to deliver to Aloysia. 

El Cat tries to dodge it out saying in a slow, bored voice that he does not know who Aloysia is. 

The message says "Do not go in without us. Love, Rangu and the Krakenwagen" El Cato shuffles down the road. A guard picks up El Cato, and goes through the armoury towards a room where Thelis is sitting. 

The cat escapes and poofs. We cannot find Aloysia. We wake up Rara and Yazhi. Rara has cucumber slices on her eyes. I spend 3 silver on booze. We meet Werin, who asks us what we want, Rangu says loot. We make our way towards betrayer's rise. 

Rangu farts at Werin. 

We into the Betrayer's rise after Ayo's company.  We see black double doors in a distance. There is a picture of a smiling woman carved inside a circle on the stone doors. There are claw marks on the image, of Avandra, a god also known as the change bringer. The doors start glowing. 

In the next room, we encounter three gibberish mouthers. One of them spits at Yazhi. It lets out a bright light that Rangu fails to shield his eyes from in turn. I restore blindness. 

Dream Diary extra rooms edition

So there is renovation going on in my building, as well as the building next to mine on the other side. In Delhi, apartments are stacked like containers, with two sides of the buildings having no windows at all. These are long, straight and narrow apartments, actually known as compartment apartments. The only window in my house is a skylight, and one in the kitchen that has a splendid view of the staircase. Throughout the day there is hammering, scraping and drilling noises, in addition to the construction workers talking loudly with each other, the malik and their wives. 

I went to sleep in the middle of all this noise. 

Dreamed that my house was opening into other rooms, something that has happened before. These rooms sprung me by surprise, it was like rooms within my house that I did not know existed. Some were behind boards, others were behind doors, some where newly constructed doorways. What was happening was, I was waking up, going back to sleep, going to a weird room, waking up, being disoriented, wandering around the house looking for the extra rooms in my half asleep state, then going back to sleep, and dreaming of the extra rooms. 

The whole block is constructed like one building. The balconies extend out into the road. The houses within the blocks intersect with each other. No two floors have the same floor plan. The steps are also weird, first storey may have triangular steps, second may have square steps... fortunately, there are no cylindrical steps so far. Then there are the illegally constructed 'barsati' floors. 

Think of these as different versions of the same rooms. They might look pretty normal, but take a closer look, they are all pretty eerie. 

Alien megastructure plans beamed to Earth

 

Call of the Netherdeep session 7

The Krakenwagen wake up in the inn where we spent the night, the Ready Room. A raven emerges from a poof of smoke and settles on Rangu's hand. Rangu's familiar El Cato tries to swap it away. We walk towards a Pyramid, and see the Betrayer's Rise. We see thick acrid smoke bellowing from the chimney of a stone building. As we make our way closer, the smell hits us. There are a bunch of bodies of slain monsters. A thin wispy man and a muscular man with one arm are taking the bodies and walking away into the crematorium. The thin guy looks at us and says "aah new bodies for Bazzoxan". 

He tells us that he and his brother are responsible for cleaning up all the bodies. There are piles which are further away from the crematorium. Close to the doors though, we notice a pile with a rather large body of a monster. It has been skipped in favour of smaller corpses. Rara starts exploring the corpses. Woolf asks if the bodies have been looted. The guy replies that the creatures do not really come out with loot, and the posessions of the guards are sent back to their families. 

Rangu remembers fighting similar creatures. Woolf goes and investigates the big creature, and bends down over it, and is stopped by the two brothers. A short little Tiefling rushes towards Woolf, and he has a bunch a notebooks on him. He is struggling to find something in his bags, and picks out a shiny badge and shows it to Woolf. It is a shiny, silver circular badge, and has a single eye on it. "You cannot do this, you cannot burn this creature, I have to study". Rara tells him "What are you going to study."

He says "I am Prolix Yusaf", I am from the  Allegiance of Allsight". He says he is an archeologist who needs to study monster. Rara says she can cut up the body so that Yusaf can study it. Rara says that she can use the battle axe to cut "delicately". Rangu wants to know more about Yusaf before helping him. "I am here to figure out more about these creatures like this Vrock and other demons that come out of Betrayer's Rise". 

"These Vrocs eat magical things. I want to see if this Vroc can reveal what is inside the betrayer's rise." Jazco points out that previous ones melted into demonic ichor. Yusaf says "they do not like light and radiant knowledge," He says he is from the university of Ank'Harel. 

Rara asks about the eating magical things. "These creatures do not have much of a brain. They like to eat shiny things. They see shiny things and think it is food," Jazco takes a dagger and cuts open the Vrock, while Rara keeps interrupting with "be careful" and "do not hurt the corpse". Prolix takes a couple of steps back as we begin to cut open the body. Jazco cuts the Vrocks stomach open. Yazhi casts haste on Jazco. With a deft hand and under instructions under Rara, Jazco makes quick work of the creature, and the contents of its stomach spills out of its guts. Jazco continues to cut over the oeusophagus. All of the sudden, the dagger hits something in its throat. Rangu casts prestidigitation to clean the blood from the dagger and its surroundings. 

Jazco finds the gullet filled with something heavy and metallic. The body of Vrock starts melting into a pool of demonic ichor, but the gullet is intact. Prolix approaches. Prolix asks the crematorium workers if they are okay with opening the gullet then and there. Prolix is scared of peering eyes. Inside are gold tripped glasses, three golden rings, a small tube shaped black onyx pizzle box, which Prolix immediately grabs."

Rangu puts on the glasses. Yusuf wants the jewelry box. You need to help me keep an eye out for an agent Alysio, who works with the Consortium of the Vermilion Dream. Rara bursts out "the tall lady". Yusuf knows that we have met her. "I have to stop her, whatever she is trying to do, I do not know what it is. These people are coldblooded cutthroats."

Jazco says, "we are an adventuring troop, and we do take quests, but we take them up on a commission basis, you know what I am saying." Yusuf is desperately trying to make his case. "If you can stop her, ot get some information from inside, I will give you this puzzle box and 200 gold coins on top." Rara tries taking the box, but he turns it away. "I will give it to you after you stop Alysio."

Yusuf notices Jazco's necklace. "Where did you get that from, if you don't mind me asking. It is my nature, I am archeologist." Jazco picks him up by the collar. "You have a deal with us, but you are not to mention anything us to your superiors, is that clear?" Yusuf says he will be at the ready room once we stop Alysio. Jazco ties a scarf around her neck so nobody sees the necklace. Yusuf lingers for a bit and walks off. 

Yazhi asks us if we should take the box from him by force. We reluctantly get to work reluctantly scooping up the remains of the Vrocks and disposing off the bodies. Rangu tells El Cato to watch where he puts the puzzle box. 

Krakenwagen rolls out. We approach the Betrayer's Rise, which has an immense double door, made of onyx and inlaid with silver and copper. Inside the gates are a whole bunch of Aurora Watch guards standing guard. We keep walking towards the betrayer's rise. Just before the gate there is another barricade. As we need the near barricade, two guards of the Aurora Watch signal for us to stop. Rara does not stop walking. "Please stop madam, or you will get shot." Rara reaches for her longbow and stops. Woolf says, "We are here for some field research."

"We are an academic party, we are looking for them." The guard says, "you definitely look academic." The guards opens the barricade and lets us through. Rara asks "Do you know, why is it called the Betrayer's Rise." The guard says, "because of the Betrayer Gods". 

In the beginning there were gods, and some gods were like we should destroy everything and start a new world. The betrayer gods went into a war with the elemental forces, and eventually were trapped in a magical plane from which they cannot escape. We make our ways towards the gate, just as we are reaching it, we start hearing shouting and screeching from behind the doors. A familiar sound comes from behind the doors, and the doors burst open. 

There are two gloomstalkers one of them is holding an aurora watch. They go high up in the air, and drop the guard right next to us. Roll for initiative. We can see three more figures inside the gates, there seem to be three soldiers who seem to be Aurora Watch soldiers, facing more figures who are approaching them. We can ask the guards with us to go and help those inside the Betrayer's Rise, or we tell them nothing and they will help us handle the gloomstalkers. 

Rara nicks her finger, covers the front of the bow with blood, and fires an arrow through one of the Gloomstalkers. The Gloomstalker goes to Jazco, and tries to bite Jazco but cannot do so as Jazco easily sidesteps its weirdly long neck. Infuriated, the Gloomstalker swipes at Jazco with its claws. The second Gloomstalker flies up above Rara and lets out a shriek. Rangu, Jazco and me are paralysed. Woolf casts pain on the Gloomstalker. Yazhi sees that there is an arrow sticking out of the second Gloomstalker, and casts Mind Whip, and deals quite a bit of psychic damage. 

Rara curses the first Gloomstalker and amplifies its damage while reducing their own health. Then takes the longbow and fires at the second Gloomstalker, but missing, and fires another one hits true. The second Gloomstar screeches and stares from its deep, dark soulless eyes. 

GS1 shrieks, paralysis Yazhi, Jazco and Me, flies down to position itself right next to Rara and Yazhi. Rangu hexes them and throws an eldritch blast at GS2. The hex misses, but the eldritch blast hits. Rangu's cards clips its wings, resulting in some black ichor dropping. The GS stares at everyone. Rangu  moves in closer to the GS1, but Jazco is in the way. Woolf casts lesser restoration on Jazco. 

Jazco thanks Rangu and Woolf, then attacks the GS and casts lesser restoration of Jazco. Jazco attacks GS1 with his rapier, while Rara attacks the GS2 twice. GS2 grabs Yazhi, and hurts him with his claws. Yazhi is now restrained. The GS2 then is shadowsteps 40 feet up into the air, and starts flying away. GS1 then attacks Rangu as he is the smaller target, who is grappled. GS shadowsteps 40 feet into the air, and then starts running away. 

Rangu thundersteps from one GS to the other, and grabs Yazhi's body. Woolf walks down the steps, uses vicious mockery to say "Looser U R". The gloomstalker continues flying away, surprised that its quarry has vanished. Jazco runs towards GS1. Yazhi grabs Rangu and Thundersteps back to the GS2, still holding hands. Yazhi does a Point Break thumbs up at Jazco, and lands up on top of G2, and then physics happens, both start falling. Both land with a thump on the ground. 

I run up to Woolf and release two bolts of chaos energy, one jumps between the two gloom stalkers, and another one hits directly. Rara shoots a Gloomstalker which is barely holding on for its dear life, and cuts off its head. Then Rangu takes out the other gloomstalker. The guards come out, look at the splashes of ichor, say well done and say that since that we can take care of us, we can come back to the tower at any time. 

Dream Diary possessed edition

I was in my old house in Bangalore. Sleeping on the floor. I can hear three sets of voices. One set is the neighbours discussing with their daughter how much she can expect to earn if she goes for various graduation courses in a college. 

Parallelly, there is the spectral voice of a woman. There are a bunch of ghosts staring in through my window, through the trees between my house and my neighbour's. They are talking of some old atrocities that my Grand aunt committed against them, by being verbally abusive, scolding too much, and just generally mean. 

While they are talking, I start turning around and moving around the floor, sort of like Saruman attacking Gandalf, and the Nazgals attacking The Stranger in Rings of Power. While turning, my bloodied foot passes through the foot of a stool, and I realise that I am a spectral presence in the dream too. I try to snap out of the spectral voices thingy, when I start hearing another voice. 

It is a servant complaining about how she is homeless, and has no money, and needs more money to survive. 

IRL, my internet connection guy came and asked me for six months advance, then came again and asked me for a loan. Then my landlord also asked for an advance because of the renovation work that he is doing. 

Dream Diary Gawan edition

So I am walking down the street, and I see three weretigers in a jail cell, with three policemen. One of them is fair and Israeli looking, and talks with the Israeli accent. Another one is docile and looks Nordic. The third one is has the appearance of complexion of someone from the subcontinent, has dark streaming hair. His name is Gawan. 

The policemen are all smiling pandus rocking staches, posing for the cameras. Now the Israeli tiger has canine teeth, and keeps nipping at his handler, who has missing pieces of flesh on his face and limbs. The pandu says this one is hungry, it is time to feed him, when the tiger takes another big bit, tearing the skin from his cheek, exposing the flesh below. The pandu calms the weretiger down, who are all in their human form, and goes away to get meat to feed him. 

That is when the asian weretiger escapes. He goes towards the right. The cops warn us not to run. We run. We run by getting into a rickshaw. The weretiger spots us, turns around, and easily starts catching up to the speeding rickshw. 

Close enough

I get very scared, and he actually catches us and mauls us. He is asked the next day by the press why he mauled innocent people. He gives a very simple answer, "I was not fed enough breakfast, and wanted to eat." 

Then there is a whole movie about Gawan. They show a map of how Gawan the weretiger was born in Kerala, with a token having a man with a tiger's face. This scene is something like the panning across the map of India as shown in Rings of Power, as well as the spinning coin (token here) settling on the map of India at the opening of Lagaan. 

Gawan is from Kerala, has been raised by tigers after the family of three tigers, a mother and two kids, a son and a daughter, killed his parents. The mother tiger has just given birth, is exhausted, and looks for easy meal in the villages. It is like Mowgli, but instead of the wolves, the tiger only adopts the baby. Gawan drinks milk from the mother tiger, fighting two other baby tigers to get to the teat. As Gawan grows up, his brother and sister tiger shoo him away from his home by teaming up, as revenge for stealing their milk, so he has to go far away. His travels takes him in close contact with human settlements. 

Here, the tiger becomes a man eater, but instead of preying on the women and children, it preys only on the strongest and meanest. These are typically the bullies and baddies in society, and people start celebrating the tiger as a hero instead of being scared of him. But, the police catch him for his crimes, and manage to reintegrate him into society. 

Then, on the internet, a team of Comic Book creators announce that they will be coming out with a board game, called Spark and that they will be giving out samples at Korum Mall and Majiwada Signal. The colour theme is bright orange and sky blue. I tell people about it, excitedly as I see them giving out the free samples from the window of the bus, while passing them. After getting home, I drive to where they are, and get into a spectacular accident. That is when I wake up. 

Dread Diary lathi taps edition

 I had this dream where I am just walking below my building, which is my old building and I see some guys hanging out who seem like the smoking up but I’ve never seen them before and they’re not from the building, they are from somewhere else so I go over to them and we smoke up and while we’re smoking up all of them are really being careful and they’re expecting a raid. I point out some toxic mushrooms to some guy and call them skull cap mushrooms and tell them not to have because he’ll give him a stomach aches upset and then I also showed him death cap mushrooms and he tells me “bro there are levels that I have to reach”. One of the people seems to know me from somewhere from a previous friend that I knew from college when we are just figuring this out  there are a group of people with them doesn’t come there or not really hitting people but giving slight taps on the bums and they round up a bunch of people and there are like young kids all over the place and even I get a tap on my bum and that I am like I live here man and he’s like okay okay go up you think I like to do this I don’t enjoy beating kids on the backsides and I go back and take the lift and I wake up

Transcontinental Safari

This was another videogame. 

It was a train that went around the world, stopping at different places, where you had to come up with different strategies for wildlife conservation, depending on local conditions. You got points for making animals resilient to climate change, reducing habitat loss, and preserving genetic diversity. 

It was very old school, pink and blue colours, a text based game, with some minimal graphics for when the train was travelling. It was just a parallax scrolling background, with different landscapes for different places in the world. The animals were black outlines in a white field. 

There was even an underwater section where the train crossed the atlantic and pacific lol.. 

Dream Diary airplane videogame edition

So the whole dream was a multiplayer videogame. There were two modes to the game, a ground based race through a city, and an aerial dogfight battle. If another plane was in sight, a machine gun turret would automatically fire a stream of bullets. Then, the player had the option to either bomb targets below them, or dispatch homing missiles, if they managed to lock in on a target.

I flew over this city for a while, at times avoiding engaging by flying high up in the air. At other times, I would go lower down and try to follow or avoid enemies. I was doing fairly well, but got killed a couple of times. Then all the other players suddenly disappeared. I went all the way to the edge of the city, which was a weird fiery dome, as if the city was constructed on the surface of the Sun. 

When heading back over the city, I saw one lonely car racing down on the streets, who left as soon as I spotted them. It was then that I realised that everyone else was in the racing phase, while I was still in the flying phase. 

I quit the game and woke up. 

Dream Diary lost things edition

 I think this is where I went to after parking my tricycle at Thane Station. (Full disclosure: I do not have a tricycle)

I am roaming around listlessly, unable to find a ticket counter, and then get on to an empty train, travelling ticketless. Vikhroli goes by, and has been boarded up, so the tracks are walled off and isolated from the city. Everything is empty and desolate. Finally reach Dadar, which is crowded. There are layers and layers of stairways and bridges, some of which have escalators and conveyors. This is a busy station, and I am able to find a ticket counter. I ask the ticket vendor if there is a train for Bengaluru available. He says, yes there is and gives me a ticket. He also asks me questions about who I am going to visit. I speak in kannada and tell him the names of my relatives. I then give him exact change, two hundred rupee notes, and two ten rupee notes. He is appreciative of that fact, and closes down the ticket window! 

He then accompanies me through the station as I go to my platform. While walking, he takes the names of my relatives by name, and then asks me if I consider them all heroes. I say yes, I do. 

I leave him and go down to the platform. In the train, I see a teacher who is also going to Bengaluru. She asks me to hurry up as the train is about to leave. The train gives out a big toot and promptly leaves. 

I look down at my ticket and the timing says 11:51 PM. It is the middle of the day, and I wonder if I have to hang around till that time, or just go home and come back in the evening. The ticket also says travels have to begin within two hours of issuing the ticket. I am unsure if any ticket will work, and if locals are plying between Mumbai and Bangalore. I decide that that has to be the case, and that I am willing to travel ticketless anyway. 

I then struggle to find a way to the platform I need to get at. I drew a map. 

The red circle on the right is where I am at. I need to get to the red circle on the left. The grey boxes are platforms, the black lines are tracks. One of the police officers tells me to cross the tracks when no one is looking. I am in the process of doing that when I notice the footover bridge (In blue) to my right. I think what a dumb licepo. 

I then start walking along the platform towards the footover bridge, when I notice my wallet on the ground. It has all the cards but the money is missing. I am relieved that at least I found my wallet. It is just on the ground next to a newspaper stand. Then a little further, I find two of my shoes. I cannot remember what happened that they came off and I lost my wallet. I am a bit distressed then I wake up. 

Hmm, losing my wallet has started to become recurring. 

Also, all the people I am seeing in my dreams are unknown.