Fear and Hunger: Pr_y For God - Part One

The year is 1933. In the Far East, the Empire of Xuanyuan has been kept under the boot of the Europan colonial powers for the past three decades. Their labour pool has been exploited, their populace forcibly addicted to imported narcotics and their sacred sites plundered by the armies of the Bremen Empire's Kaiser and the Vatican's Dark Priesthood.

But this Age of Humiliation is coming to a bloody conclusion. The Burning Tide, a united front of agrarian-communists and Xuanyuanese nationalists, has swept aside the armies of the collaborationist Shi Dynasty and encircled their capital city of Yanjing - along with the Lantern Island Special Region, an international settlement ceded to the Bremen Empire.

You are the Survivors, a group of influential foreigners and military officials accompanying the Europan expeditionary force sent to crush this uprising and break the months-long Siege of Yanjing.Things have not gone to plan. The Europans barely retook Yanjing, whilst the besiegers merely withdrew into the surrounding countryside, where they have regrouped and mounted a fierce counterattack. The Europan line is failing, and you all have boarded a barge to flee to the Special Region - a fortified river island. However, you do not know the state of the settlement, it's been encircled for months with no communication forth-coming. 

But with a horde of rebels at your back baying for the blood of foreigners and collaborators, what choice do you have? 

The rickety river barge departed across the Triumvirate River, the four Survivors on board trying to avoid the hateful stares of the battle-weary Europan soldiers they left behind them.

• The Captain - Beau Fowler, a Rondonian ex-convict and violent drug-smuggler.

• The Officer - Herman Storl, a Bremen Oberleutnant and unrepentant coward.

• The Theologian - Milo Vaccari, a Dark Priest from Vatican City and amoral anthropologist.

• The Yellow Mage - Aya Yazar, an overconfident Yellow Mage from the Eastern Sanctuaries.

As the barge crossed the Triumvirate it entered an incredibly thick fog. The Theologian and Captain realised it was some sort of corrosive industrial smog. Not even the wind could shift it. The Mage noted that heavy fog was said in occult circles to bely the presence of the Old Gods pressing up against reality. However, the fog was low-lying - allowing the Survivors to see a Church’s belltower in front of them and a Clocktower to their left.

Unfortunately it didn't help them see the Ferry Station's concrete pier until it was too late. The barge crashed into the docks with a sickening crunch, immediately beginning to sink into the churning black waters of the Triumvirate. The Captain, the only swimmer of the bunch, simply dove into the filthy waters and clambered up a ladder whilst the Officer managed to (barely) scramble off the sinking ship onto the dock. Ever the gentleman, he quickly helped the Yellow Mage climb up - ignoring the Theologian who clumsily toppled into the water. He eventually managed to drag himself onto the pier, dripping wet and bleeding from his scalp.

The four Survivors then made their way down the pier towards the Ferry Station's toll booth, where the Officer grimly noted evidence of a firing squad being performed there. They decided not to look around and instead to head to the right - where the Theologian thought he remembered the Special Region's Bremen Fort being. As the group left the Residential District that the Ferry Station was located in, they entered a strangely overgrown area. Trees burst from cars, undergrowth consumed buildings and roots destroyed asphalt. The Yellow Mage recalled that the Special Region’s Botanical Gardens were nearby - it appeared something was causing them to expand and subsume nearby areas.

They then stumbled across a corpse blood-eagled on a lamp post. It had pink-tinged skin, thin limbs and a distended gut that had been disembowelled and stuffed with bundles of foul-smelling herbs. The Theologian pontificated that it was a execution method used by the primitive tribes of Vinland. The Captain and Yellow Mage dismissed the papist, saying that this was a universal ritual of the anarcho-primitivist cultists of the Old God Vinushka - a means of purifying those seen as "corrupted" by heretical magicks. 

The Theologian ignored the criticisms of his fellows, using his medical knowledge to diagnose the strange corpse with an Abyssonian disease Kwashiorkor, a disorder caused by malnutrition and improper protein intake. But it was the worst case he’d ever seen, especially in an adult male.

Moving on from the morbid display the group pushed deeper into the overgrown Botanical Gardens. The Officer soon spotted a strange, spear-wielding man in a sheep mask watching them from the bushes. After organising a whispered plan with the Captain, the pair grabbed their weapons and split off to flank the mysterious figure.

Upon being rushed down from two sides, Sheep-Mask panicked and threw poison darts at the Captain - missing. The Theologian shouted out to Sheep-Mask, asking which gods he served. He answered “Sylvian and her daughter Vinushka”. He claimed that he was guarding the Old Gods’ sacred Grove and asked the Survivors to leave peacefully. However, the Officer wasn’t going to let the papist talk down someone who was obviously a degenerate communist, and shot the cultist with his sidearm. Sheep-Mask responded by throwing a dart straight into the Oberleutnant's face - maiming his right eye.

The other three Survivors quickly mobbed Sheep-Mask, stabbing, bashing and throwing burning incense on him until he collapsed into a smouldering heap. The Theologian dragged the screaming Officer to his feet and patched up his mangled eye-socket, meanwhile the Captain helped himself to the dead cultist’s flint spear.

The group moved for the Bremen Fort before more mask-wearing weirdos showed up. However, they arrived to see the gates hanging ominously open and numerous corpses in the fog-shrouded parade grounds. With that in mind, they instead chose to use a secret passage to the fort’s underground Bunker Network which the Theologian had recalled from his academic readings. They found it in a nearby building’s basement, entering the subterranean concrete maze to search for surviving military personnel and supplies.

As they delved deeper they discovered that someone had dug a wood-framed tunnel off of the Bunker Network. The Theologian thought it might lead to the Catacombs of the Church they saw above the fog earlier. Most the Survivors continued ahead, but the Captain stayed back to examine this strange new tunnel. 

The other trio searched the Bunker Network, finding a generator room with a barrels upon barrels of diesel fuel - not useful for now. They did locate the base's armoury, but it was trashed - appearing that someone had scuttled the place thermite charges. Fortunately the Yellow Mage's thorough search found a working rifle in the wreckage, along with a fistful of cartridges. 

Most disturbing however was what they found inside the Bunker Network's ration stockpile  - what appeared to be pseudopod-like tendrils of red-tinged flesh digging out of the concrete bunker walls and into the canned food. The Theologian was especially concerned about the unnatural meat - it bore an uncanny resemblance to the Flesh of the Alll-Mer he'd seen summoned during the secret blood-magick rituals of the Dark Priesthood.

However as the trio examined their peturbing discovery, the Captain noticed a weird burning smell filling the air from his rearguard position. He made the wise decision to duck into the tunnels leading to the Catacombs to hide, narrowly dodging a massive Bremen Soldier who rounded a corner in flame-retardant clothing and wielding a flamethrower.

The other Survivors soon heard heavy footfalls approaching from behind them and, unwilling to face whatever the fuck it was, ran up a set of stairs leading out of the Bunker Network into the Bremen Fort proper. Thankfully, their pursuer’s gas mask meant it had terrible eyesight, so it didn’t notice the Survivors' retreat - muttering to itself “burn, fire, mutants, scrub, clean” as it fumigated a (completely empty room) with burning gasoline.

Now safe, the Theologian and Yellow Mage realised that the towering form was a Marriage of Flesh - the result of a secret ritual of Sylvian that unites two individuals in both body and soul, turning them into a new and more powerful being. They shuddered at the implications of the Bremen Army tampering with the magic of the Old Gods, but noted that hopefully the monster had enough sanity left to respect the Officer's rank. Albeit, everyone agreed that trying to order around a 7-foot-tall madman with a flamethrower would be their last resort.

 

Meanwhile the Captain realised his teammates were M.I.A and a pyromaniac killing machine blocked the way back to them, so he cut his losses and continued down the dirt tunnel. He eventually arrived in a series of Catacombs beneath the Church of the Alll-Mer. He soon made his way up to the surface, but not before taking the opportunity to plunder some grave goods.

And from far above him, in the Church's belltower, a gunshot. He wasn't alone here.