The Story So Far:
Chapter 1: The Dead Wizard's Skyscraper
Day One
The adventurers investigate rumors of a dead wizard's tower and are shipwrecked on its island. Chaka climbs the towering Goddess of the Torch and finds a lair of subhuman creatures within her gigantic crown! Suddenly, more primitive brutes burst from the jungle! They attack with savage ferocity!
Chapter 2: Escape From the Island of the Apes
Day One, continued
Suddenly, strangely advanced apes on horseback charge into the fantastic fray! The civilized apes' alien weapons explode with a deafening crack of thunder! The primitive humans flee for their lives! Some of the adventurers do too as Maskelyn startles the simians' horses. In time, the apes withdraw in merry spirits from the successful hunt. The remaining primordial humans retreat to the shelter of the Goddess as the adventurers regroup. The shipwrecked explorers enter the primeval jungle in search of the dead wizard's tower. They encounter staggering wonders in the primal rainforest and avoid a deadly field of quicksand.
Chapter 3: The Land That Time Forgot
Day One, continued
The jungle gives way to an astonishing valley that time forgot. The shipwrecked explorers of the unknown prepare to camp for the night. Jeojand and Chaka climb a tall tree to survey their surroundings as sun sets on the valley of the dinosaurs. That night, a sabre-toothed tiger stalks into the adventurers' camp! The fearsome apex predator attacks! Buck falls as hunter claims its prey! The massive carnivore carries Buck's body off into the night!
Day Two
The shipwrecked explorers of the mysterious island awaken with the dawn to find no other members of their party devoured in the night. From their vantage they survey the valley and spy distant dangers lurking to the south. They head west, crossing The Valley That Time Forgot until they are suddenly ambushed by a gigantic prehistoric alligator! To defend the explorers, Maskelyn conjures an illusion of fire! Suddenly a towering Reptile God lumbers from the trees and devours the alligator in a gruesome harvest of blood and bone. The adventures hide from the unimaginable titan. The enormous terror stalks closer as Maskelyn spreads his illusory wildfire. As the Reptile God draws nearer, Ko-Nan causes a diversion and the explorers flee for their lives!
They escape the valley and enter the strange stone forest of the western mountains, finding a rope bridge spanning a bottomless chasm. Cautiously, they begin to cross. Chaka and Fiefo reach the other side. Suddenly, before half are across, immense, prehistoric birds of prey soar up from the chasm to attack! The voracious flying terrors descend upon Ko-Nan in a wild feeding frenzy! Gigantic talons seize the barbarian and suddenly he is airborne! Ko-Nan wounds the predator and is released from its clutches. The barbarian plummets down, crashing through the ropebridge but manages to hang on! The adventurers bring spells, stones, slings and shafts to bear in a brutal battle and are finally victorious!
The explorers escape the stone forest and climb an immense, towering plateau that is savaged by repeated lightning strikes. Atop it endures the dead wizard's skyscraper. The adventurers reach it alive and find a way inside. They soon rest beneath enchanted witch lights that never sleep.
Day Three
The explorers of the unknown awaken and resume their exploration of the strange skyscraper of the dead wizard.
Chapter 4: Dungeon of the Daleks
Day Three, continued
From out of the steel and stone corridor emerge strange things that call themselves the Daleks. A wild battle erupts, with many casualties. Daleks are sheared open and blown apart. Mighty heroes fall. More Daleks explode in conflagrations of screams and flame. The adventurers are victorious. But more Daleks are coming! The adventurers flee deeper into the dead wizard's skyscraper.
They plunge headlong into darkness and discover an alchemist's bizarre laboratory. Reckless experimentation leads to strange discoveries. The adventurers sample inexplicable concoctions when suddenly, a brain-thing in a vat speaks! The hideous creature identifies itself as a Dalek. Repulsed by its very existence, Ko-Nan smashes the wicked brain-thing into oblivion and the adventurers escape the bizarre laboratory.
Delving deeper into the dead wizard's skyscraper, they find multi-colored veins spilling from a hole in the wall. Reconnecting a severed artery opens a secret door! The adventurers explore the secret white room. Throwing a lever almost kills Chaka while revealing a magnetic iron pyramid and a stairway down. Throwing the lever again brings Chaka and the pyramid crashing back down to earth! Chaka's wounds are tended to, the pyramid raised, and the stairs revealed once more.
Chapter 5: Subterrane of the Cyborgs
Day Three, continued
The secret staircase is opened and descended. It ends in a glossy white octagonal room with two large identical doors. Between the twin doors, slumps an iron skeleton crowned by a glass orb that encases a human brain. It introduces itself as Garamond Antiqua.
Chaka opens a door onto a strange chamber filled with giant eggs. The eggs open, revealing perplexing baptismal fonts filled with green holy water. Adrock pulls a handle inside the egg and he and Jeojand are bathed in living green ooze! They shriek in terror as they feel the emerald slime altering their very beings! The adventurers save Adrock, Jeojand and Garamond from a fate worse than death!
Suddenly a door slides open, revealing many strange figures beyond! They advance upon the adventurers, rasping "...fresh parts..." The battle is joined! Ko-Nan hacks a limb off an enemy as Adrock's sorcery sends four machine men into "hibernation mode!" Jeojand's magic sends the rest of them to sleep and, as quick as it erupted, the battle is ended! Chaka and Tullia venture off, evading a trap door. The bizarre beings of flesh and steel stand motionless in place as all of them are slain but one. That one is charmed by Jeojand's magic and the adventurers question it. Meanwhile, Chaka is lowered into an open trap door and finds a hanging cage beneath it. Under questioning, the half-human horror of skin and steel groans that the dead wizard Xygax is "The Dungeon Master." Suddenly the inverted iron pyramid crashes back into place, capping the top of the spiral stairs, and the doors to the octagonal room lock shut. Jeojand's enchantment fades and the macabre thing of flesh and iron attacks! Before it can land a blow, Ko-Nan beheads the last clockwork cadaver with a terrible stroke of his merciless ax!
Garamond's advance causes another door to open of its own volition, revealing a rank, deteriorated chamber, two stories tall. Suddenly, malformed glowing bat-creatures attack! The luminous, twisted chiropterans impale the adventurers with razor-sharp proboscises, and drink their blood! Jeojand and Ko-Nan fall! Chaka and Tullia enter the chamber's lower level. Maskelyn is the next to fall. The adventurers retaliate savagely until there is only one vampiric insect-bat remaining! Below the wild fray, Chaka accidentally douses himself in glowing green liquid and begins to transform, to mutate! The battle ends but Jeojand does not survive it.
In mourning and exhaustion, the adventurers regroup and retreat back to the massacre of the eerie, half-human creatures of flesh and steel. After four hours surrounded by the broken and the dead, they hear something! The door flies open revealing a massive writhing abomination; a ghastly composite creature of gruesome dead bodies, including Jeojand's! The adventurers flee the gigantic writhing mass, plunging into a dead end! The frightful abomination absorbs more cyborg corpses and its heinous body grows larger! Fiefo stands alone against it and is murdered! His broken, mangled corpse is then incorporated into the hideous collective of the abomination! Garamond joins Fiefo's dreadful fate! And so does Adrock! Tullia is the last adventurer standing. She dips arrows in green slime, fires them at the cyborg abomination, and manages to stay alive long enough for the thing to undergo a violent transformation into a gigantic viridian amoeboid that collapses in an emerald deluge! The last one standing, Tullia is victorious. Then she transforms into a gruesome living mire.
Chapter 6: Rebooted
Day Three, continued
Miraculously, the adventurers survive! They flee the skyscraper of the wizard Xygax at sunset and run through the night, half-mad.
Day Four
At dawn, they are reunited in a parched landscape. They survey the desolate wasteland as hunger, thirst and exhaustion threaten their lives.
Chapter 7: The Castle U.S.S. Enterprise
Day Four, continued
The adventurers set out across the barren wastes. Near midday, they discover an astonishing castle! Inscribed across its vast circular battlement are ancient cuneiforms of 'Earth That Was' that read: Enterprise. The adventurers take cover in the shade beneath the immense disk-rampart and find a large pool of clear water and a ruptured gash in the rampart's iron wall. They drink their fill, rest and finish the last of their food.
That night, the adventurers enter the inexplicable Castle U.S.S. Enterprise and are seized by a strange juxtaposition! Suddenly they are effortlessly walking inside the vast slanted saucer as if it were flat to the ground rather than listing at its steep angle! They find themselves in an immense and empty iron room whose far walls lie beyond the broken moonlight. Adrock conjures divine light and they discover another hole in the thick iron of the southernmost wall.
Beyond it they find strange foliage as if from some otherworldly jungle! The explorers step through the hole in the sundered wall and enter the exotic unrecognizable foliage of some alien forest! They discover bones and shreds of leather and cloth similar to that worn by the barbaric, civilized gorillas they encountered on the beach days ago. Suddenly, the vast, featureless ceiling flickers to life with illuminating light! The forest is actually some sort of otherworldly garden!
And then strange mutated animals of the irradiated post-apocalyptic wastes emerge from the foliage! Before the adventurers can react, the gigantic monsters are upon them! The explorers quickly fell the colossal moth creature and the king of the monsters begins to feast on its carcass! The mammoth lizard and the prehistoric flying reptile are the next to fall, and the turtle behemoth is the next to feed! The battle becomes a feast. Ko-Nan butchers the gargantuan lizard for food. The others discover several miniature God's Eyes!
Suddenly, the adventurers are charged by The Kirk with a Quest of the Gods! The magnitude of this divine intervention weighs heavily upon them as they rest, recover and partake of Ko-Nan's cooked feast. Then, reborn with glorious purpose and sanctified with divine blessings, they embark on their sacred crusade, venturing deeper into the mysterious domain of the gods! The explorers of the astonishing citadel-ship make strange new discoveries.
They find a new God's Eye table and begin working to solve its mystifying puzzle. Before they can solve it, young Jack steps onto the dais and is suddenly consumed by a fiery light! The light fades and Jack is gone! Hans quickly follows Jack into oblivion! The monstrous leviathans barreling down upon them, the rest of the explorers race for the dais! Narrowly escaping the gigantic ravenous jaws, they are engulfed in light and suddenly the monsters are gone and the questers are reunited with Hans and Jack!
The explorers search the chamber and the doors fly open onto a corridor choked with wreck! The smashed, scattered furniture that fills the corridor seems to have been a makeshift barricade violently sundered. Signs of fire and battle are all around. But there are no bodies. Adrock follows ancient hieroglyphic murals to the Healer of the Gods. Suddenly, Chaka appears out of thin air! Adrock delves deeper into the god realm in his tireless quest for sacred lore. Suddenly, he and Maskelyn are attacked by a madman! Meanwhile, Moniqua is consumed in lightning and flames at the God's Eye altar and is forever changed! The ranting madman strikes Maskelyn with a strange silver weapon that smites him to the floor! The adventurers overpower the shouting maniac! He seems to know of the Kirk! The fighting madness leaves him and they speak. He is a McCoy, a 'doctor' who sails a sea that spans many worlds. The strange celestial shaman asks and answers many questions.
Chapter 8: Alien Invasion
Day Four, continued
Suddenly, McCoy has a seizure. He collapses to the floor, screaming! He writhes and spasms and the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt is ripped open... from the inside! A ghastly creature emerges from the gore and the blood of his body! The heinous newborn flees and Hans and Jack quickly smash and hammer it to bits! It dies shrieking. Suddenly, dark horrific shapes slither from the shadows! Sleek, black, glistening, serpentine, inhuman, they resemble the heinous newborn whose slaughtered remains lay at the questers' feet! The ebon monstrosities attack with frightful speed! Ko-Nan sinks his ax deep in a spray of blood that burns like fire! The barbarian's vengeful ax is a blur of silver that cleaves asunder the frightful prehuman creature! Ko-Nan eagerly takes Monique's place at the battle's pinch point and decapitates another monster in a spray of burning blood! The last hideous creature, impaled by Monique's javelin, retreats into the shadows! The explorers recover and Adrock finds crystal jewels to power the magic wand of the celestial healer, McCoy. They briefly confer and flee before more of the black horrors descend upon them!
They follow the curving corridor west, but it begins to circle back around! Monique tries the nearest door, discovering some sort of living quarters of the gods! Hans kneels before a porcelain throne as Maskelyn awakens a God's Eye, summoning forth visions of the Castle Enterprise! Adrock and Maskelyn study the magic mirror as Hans gently pillages the chamber of its strange treasures. The questers barricade the room and rest.
Day Five
They awaken in horror. Ko-Nan the barbarian suddenly hacks asunder the heinous alien parasites in a spray of acidic yellow blood that consumes their piteous hosts alive! Then the door to the corridor unexpectedly whooshes open revealing a great leonine monster! The bestial monster speaks and soon joins the explorers of the strange castle.
After restoring their magic power and regaining their strength, the surviving questers of The Kirk are ready to resume their sacred crusade for the mysterious artifact of the gods, the Engine Earring. They set out, cautiously delving deeper into the vast castle of curving corridors until they come to a door that Ko-Nan and Malga force asunder! Beyond lies a bottomless pit! Suddenly, Maskelyn scurries away from the precipice! A magical door opens at the gnome's approach and beyond is a room filled with glowing, pulsing jewels! Within, he discovers thin, colorful strands and a strange, furry creature. Adrock frees the mammal as Maskelyn deftly weaves the thin strands into 75 feet of thick, heavy, rainbow-hued rope.
Suddenly Connak the cat-man rogue and Sheriff Yul the robot lawman appear! The adventurers are reunited! Adrock and Fiefo regale the tale of their miraculous visions of James T. Kirk Douglas and their earthly encounter with a Celestial Star Shaman, as Ko-Nan descends into the pit.
Chapter 9: Abyss of the Xenomorphs
Day Five, continued
The explorers of the Castle U.S.S. Enterprise brave the bottomless pit when suddenly, their kaleidoscopic rope is cut! As Malga the Mok plunges to her death, a gigantic horror emerges from the shadows above! The hideous hybrid descends upon the adventurers, navigating the iron pit with chilling ease and familiarity! Plunging frantically down the endless shaft, the fleeing heroes realize that the pale, monstrous crossbreed will catch them before they can reach the bottom! Maskelyn conjures a wall of fraudulent flames! Ko-Nan's merciless ax hacks through the writhing veil of fire, wounding the monstrous thing! Burning blood sprays the adventurers! Ko-Nan cleaves the immense monster again with another fell-handed blow, grievously injuring it and raining more acidic blood down upon them! Maskelyn's concentration falters from the burning! His spell is broken and the false fire suddenly evaporates into thin air! Furious, the horrific predator roars and carves Connak and Ko-Nan with razor-sharp talons! The warriors lunge upward, driving sword and ax deep, smiting the heinous monstrosity dead! Burning blood showers down again, followed by the gigantic corpse!
The explorers recover and continue their descent into the bottomless pit, following Adrock to an iron door set into the shaft wall. Ko-Nan breaks it down. Beyond the iron threshold, the ship's dungeons are seemingly swallowed up by earth and rock! The wondrous creations of the ancients are all shrouded beneath a labyrinth of curving stone formations. No, not stone. Resin.
They carefully delve deeper into the dank, misty dungeons of the Castle U.S.S. Enterprise. Suddenly, the wall formations change. "My god," says Adrock. "There's someone in there!" More ghastly cocooned bodies are trapped against the resin-coated wall! Yul almost hacks one free and her weak voice urgently pleads, "...please!... kill me..." They end her suffering and suddenly her ribcage explodes in a vomit of crimson! A heinous screeching spawn of the black demons bursts out of her, hatching from its host in a ghastly baptism of blood! Connak hacks apart the hideous progeny!
Suddenly, shadows emerge from the labyrinthine darkness and become looming, frightful things! Sleek black nightmares burst hissing and screeching from out of the darkness and descend upon the adventurers in a ferocious onslaught of talons and fangs! Yul shears one demon in twain as Adrock ensorcels two others! An ebon fiend rips and slices Connak and Yul in its unrelenting attack! Ko-nan the barbarian cleaves a daemonic foe asunder! Yul quickdraws his crossbow as Fiefo impales the last ebon nightmare in its hideous bulbous skull, killing it instantly! The attack is over, for now. The invaders of the demon labyrinth regroup and recover.
And then the explorers cautiously press on, deeper into the mist and shadow of the demons' labyrinth. They soon come to a great and terrible chamber of large, leathery, egg-like objects and more dreadful human shapes hidden behind cocoons of resin. The explorers quietly back away from the hellish hall, cautiously probing the boundaries of the demon maze. There, they find the goal of their sacred quest: The Kirk! The Kirk thanks them and recites strange, magic words of power.
Suddenly, a great black spear bursts out of Adrock's chest! It is the serpentine tail of a gigantic demon horror that descends hissing from the camouflage shapes of the ceiling as all is plunged into darkness! After a savage onslaught, the questers create some light and Yul quickdraws the strange crossbow of the gods and fires! A magical ray of cold starlight twice scorches the glistening exoskeleton of the serpentine demon queen! Then Fiefo and Ko-Nan spear and hack the monstrous atrocity, razing it asunder in a cataclysm of fiery blood!
Dragging The Kirk with them, they flee northward to freedom, as the dungeon-ship readies to "self-destruct."
Then The Kirk desperately warns them that the strange castle-ship out of Ancient Earth mythology, and all its inhabitants, was created by Xygax... for his amusement. But the angel's gratitude is no less real. The grateful demigod captain will go down with the dungeon-ship as the saviors of the Castle Enterprise flee into the cave systems beneath its sundered wall! Then comes a deafening thundering of flame that shakes the ground beneath the heroes' feet! The cavern collapses behind them in a violent cataclysm and the crew of the Castle Enterprise are free from the ghastly alien infestation forever. And free from Xygax.
Chapter 10: Secret of the Sleestaks
Day Ten
The surviving heroes journey for five days in the vast underground cave complex beneath the barren wasteland of Xygax's Island. They find a trio of ancient pylons that creates strange visions as two figures suddenly appear! The two groups of explorers warily exchange greetings that echo in the great cavern. The holy strangers offer blessings of healing and then the combined group continues eastward through the vast cavern system for hours until the caves end at a smooth dark tunnel cut into the living rock. Within lurk several strange creatures that share the same inhuman likeness as those carved atop the mysterious obelisks! The large devolved humanoids with both reptilian and insectoid features react with neither surprise nor aggression. One hisses, "Come forth, humanssss. Pay the toll and you may passsss through."
The adventurers pay and then they enter the City of the Sleestaks! They speak to Enath of the last of the Altrusians, who asks for their help. The Sleestak guards take an interest in their discussion and then a gong signals the Hours of Mystery. Finver momentarily resists the guards that guide the adventurers deeper into the City of the Sleestaks. Yul crashes into a gong, Finver catches up and the adventurers are shown to a chamber where they may rest.
They are locked in. Outside all is quiet. They speak with a prisoner in an adjoining chamber, Ambrose the ape, and discover his cellmate is a malformed abomination! Meanwhile, Ko-Nan the barbarian grows tired of captivity. He examines the portcullis lock. Yul walks to the bars that segregate the adventurers from Ambrose and bends them apart with his bare hands!
Draupadi examines the malformed Altrusian-abomination and suddenly it tries to kill her! A chaotic fray erupts and ends, as swiftly as it began, with the monstrosity's head upon the floor! Many of the adventurers breathe the spore clouds of the thing's pustule infestation! Finver tries to bend the bars to no avail. Then Connak picks the lock on the cell door.
The heroes escape from captivity, creeping slowly down the rough-hewn tunnel beyond the prison bars. Connak opens a door to find two Sleestaks inside; motionless, lifeless, as if in some strange state of hibernation! The eerie Sleestaks stand entranced with their bulbous eyes wide open! Giving them a wide berth, the adventurers quietly search the chamber, raid an exquisite Altrusian chest. A ring of keys opens a door onto a luxuriously appointed chamber. The adventurers search it and find a half finished letter, and treasure hidden in a secret compartment.
Two more doors are opened and the adventurers discover the throneroom of the Sleestak King! They cautiously search among the eerily dormant insect-reptilians, discovering a secret passage! The clandestine raiders follow it, winding ever onward through darkness and mystery. Beyond the secret path lies another world! They enter and discover a prisoner in a torture chamber! The explorers to this secret realm struggle to comprehend its enigmatic sorcery-engines! At the prisoner's insistence, they don strange spectacle lenses and when a Sleestak enters, they cannot believe their eyes!
Chapter 11: The Parallax Reality
Day Ten, continued:
Startling discoveries are made of another actuality behind the facade of the Sleestak city! Through strange spectacle-lenses, one reptilian is seen for what it really is! The adventurers attack as the counterfeit creature sounds the alarm! The corpse-like atrocity falls beneath a brutal rain of merciless blows! Suddenly, a gong signals the end of the Hours of Mystery! Sleestaks without number descend upon them and a wild fray erupts! Sword and spell are brought to bear! Maskelyn conjures fraudulent flames and the Sleestaks tell the adventurers to surrender! The adventurers will not comply! Suddenly, the doppelganger's bracelet opens a gate!
The adventurers miraculously escape! They plunge through the cobalt portal and land in an empty cavern! All is quiet. The adventurers regroup and recover their strength at the cave's shoreline. Then Finver anYul explore the watery depths and report back. Everyone drinks and dives. They surface in the subterranean lake of the City of the Sleestaks! Everyone swims back the way they came, except Yul. They discover an air-filled cavern.
Suddenly, both parties are attacked! Bloodthirsty sand eels lunge at the faces of the adventurers, as a gigantic toad-hydra ensnares Yul with its hideous tongue and draws him toward its vast, fanged jaws! After a fierce battle, Yul is rent asunder! And the crawling, loathsome sand eels are destroyed! The surviving adventurers recover, and secure the area, discovering a nest of hatched, empty eggshells. Then at last, they rest for the night.
Day Eleven:
In the morning, a gate is opened via a doppelganger's magic bracelet! Finver accidentally plunges through the cobalt portal! Everyone leaps in after him and they are all reunited in the same empty cavern the bracelet brought them to before! They discover strange, mysterious sorcery engines and glass vats filled with Altrusian eggs! Tunnels wend deeper, toward two doors. The adventurers approach one and suddenly it flies open, revealing Sleestak warriors without number! Wounded, outnumbered, surrounded; the situation looks dire! In the ferocious battle, the adventurers see a ghoul creature among the Sleestak ranks, and discover more sorcery engines! Mungo uses the strange magic bracelet to rend open a hole in the fabric of reality! Things look desperate. Draupadi smashes the sorcery engine and suddenly everyone can see the insidious doppelgangers masquerading as Sleestaks, including the Sleestaks! The craven unmasked doppelgangers surrender! The adventurers are hailed as heroes.
Chapter 12: The Memory Web
Day Sixteen:
The adventurers emerge from a network of caverns into a withered forest at dusk. They discover several unmoving figures enmeshed in a great, pale spider-web adorning the barren trees!
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the gigantic web releases its lifeless prey and launches itself directly at the adventurers! Most of them are engulfed in its vast, clinging strands! And then suddenly, horribly, it begins to devour their memories! Outside its grasp, Draupadi and Ko-Nan attack the bizarre creature and their weapons are stuck fast to the living chrysalis! The sentient web continues to consume their delicious memories! Their identities all but gone, the adventurers slay the web and suddenly, in a psychic shock wave, all their memories return and with them, the undigested memories of the web's dead victims, including their quest to find a fallen star!
Chapter 13: Night of the Walking Wet
Day Eighteen:
After two days crossing a jungle primeval, following memories not their own, the explorers of the Forbidden Island discover a cave mouth. Could it be that of the friendly primitives thought to live near the star fall?
Scouts advance into the dark cave. Meanwhile, outside, strange shapes lumber from out of the jungle! Shambling travesties of human life, completely coated in a thick, viscous slime! The adventurers flee into the cave and crash into the scouts! Suddenly, from the darkness ahead of them and behind them, comes a wet, slithering, slopping sound! Growing louder! Louder! They rush deeper into the tunnel and are quickly surrounded by the slime men! A frenzied battle erupts and ends as quickly as it started, with the adventurers victorious.
Triumphant, they edge deeper into the cave and discover a vacant living area. Suddenly, ghastly misshapen horrors stagger forth, akin to the repulsive slime-covered cadavers, except less fully formed! The adventurers form a battle line at the cavern's chokepoint, but against the groaning, stomach-churning atrocities, none can mount an effective attack! A strategy is devised and unexpectedly, a conflagration consumes three malformed abominations! Suddenly, a gurgling shriek heralds the arrival of slime-covered walking corpses from outside! Maskelyn conjures a wall of mist to conceal their position! The barricade of fog and flame falls and the fray is rejoined! The seekers of the fallen star are triumphant, for now.
Fearing that she and Finver will transform into the horrors of slime and bone, Draupadi urges someone to burn the ghastly infestation from her flesh! To no avail. Suddenly she and Finver hear a voice inside their minds, welcoming them to the Void Slime!
Chapter 14: Things From Another World
Day Eighteen, continued:
Draupadi attempts a Prayer of Dispelling, to no avail! Whatever this chilling invasion of mind and body is, it is not borne of sorcery! She and Mungo urgently voice their desire for rest. If they can survive the night of the walking wet, at dawn their gods may grant them blessings to overcome the infestation of the Void Slime!
Suddenly, malformed monstrosities of slime and bone (that had once been men?!) return to the cave and are rent asunder!
Venturing deeper, they find a place of worship for the primitive tribe whose home this was before the coming of the falling star. And there, some of them behold visions that overwhelm their senses and their sanity. Somehow Ko-Nan finds his way back. Alarmed by Ko-Nan's dire condition, Connak and Finver form a search party. In time, the vision-questers are found and the adventurers rest for the night.
Day Nineteen:
Draupadi and Finver awaken in horror! The slime infestation on their bodies has grown to engulf their entire arms from fingertips to shoulder! The adventurers cure themselves of the heinous blight!
They discover that, in the night, the subterranean river has transformed into a channel of slime! They follow it to its source and discover a slime-coated tunnel and cavern! The adventurers divide their number and some embark on their own psychedelic vision quest. Others encounter strange things rising from the slime pit! Fleeing for their lives, Fiefo and Finver rush headlong into the Slime God!
Chapter 15: The Slime God
Day Eighteen, continued:
The Slime God and its sentinels attack! Finver is infected by the Slime God! The adventurers flee for their lives, reaching the outside only to find it blighted and entirely coated in slime! Finver the slime-dwarf runs off, half mad! He finds the vast, slime-coated impact crater of the fallen star! There, Mungo cures him of the slime infestation! Then Finver descends alone into the impact crater, and the crevasse at its bottom, reentering the lair of the Slime God! Before he is found, he quickly escapes with curiously marked iron shards of the fallen star! Draupadi and Mungo recognize the markings.
The adventurers flee through the slime-coated jungle, away from hideous Slime God! Some half mile from its lair, they discover the creeping edge of the radiating slime blight, and escape beyond it!
Day Nineteen:
By dawn, the edge of the slime blight has reached them! The adventurers lay their plans and re-enter the realm of the Slime God!
They return to the rim of the vast, slime-coated impact crater of the fallen star. Draupadi and Mungo descend into it on ropes and suddenly from below, they hear the wet gurgling of the hideous Slime God! Mungo wards the rift!
The adventurers race around the blighted mound that houses the caverns of the Slime God, moving toward the nearest cave mouth, the northern one! As it appears in Draupadi's torchlight, the gigantic twin horrors from the slime pit lurch from its black maw! Suddenly, the adventurers are upon them! In a maelstrom of violence and electricity, the gigantic monstrosities are hacked asunder in a spray of viridian miasma before they can act!
Two cavern entrances are sealed. One remains and then the Slime God is imprisoned once more! Racing as fast as they dare across the slime-blighted landscape, the adventurers urgently descend upon the southern cave mouth! From that black maw echoes the spine-tingling gurgle-shrieks of the alien Slime God! Soon, the gigantic slithering horror from another world will be upon them!
Suddenly, the revolting Slime God vomits from the cave mouth in a geyser of heinousness and the battle is joined! At its conclusion, the hideous Slime God is dead and the adventurers victorious!
They search the caves and discover several primitive rafts and access to the sea. Unwilling to play Xygax's mad, deadly game any longer, the adventurers escape the demented wizard's diabolical lands, sailing back toward the mainland and freedom!
The End
Player Resources:
End of the World (game description)
Strange New World (maps and realms)
Viewscreen (the story so far in images)