Sir Edwin Landseer
In the sunny lands of Urth's equator, the potentate of Shamash the Lioneater has descended into anarchy. After a failed campaign against rebel forces, the Nephil's armies of chimeras have been scattered. The god-king himself is rumoured to have been horribly maimed.
The golden-haired cripple was last spotted on a pilgrimage to his cult's mountaintop temple. There's been no word from him or his cultists since. If there was ever a time to rob a demigod, it's now. Get in and get out before someone beats you to it.
A trio of godhunters stood upon a hoodoo overlooking the plains. A stairway had been carved into the pillar of rock, leading to a watchpost complete with a signal bonfire to be lit in times of peril. But the garrison was gone, the fire burned to ash. In their place stood Priest-King of the THUNDER, Anax Astyages, looking through his spyglass.
To the east and west, fields of cereal grains and abandoned latifundias. To the north, a lion-mouthed opening in a cliff-face - the temple of Shamash's cult. To the south, a procession of golden-maned chimeras marched towards them, a few hours away at most. The mad wizard had no way of knowing whether these urmahlullu were Shamash's loyal armigers, insane rebels or just greedy deserters.
He supposed it didn't really matter. They'd kill him all the same.
After relaying his findings to his allies, Barber the 7' tall cannibal-elf and Voryn the bug-worshipping necromancer, the trio descended the hoodoo and set course for the dungeon. A carved stairway led to the yawning lion's mouth, beneath which emerged a fast-flowing river. Interested in taking a back entrance, Barber forded the stream with her impressive strength, dragging the diminutive casters with her.
Unfortunately the river terminated in a grate of thick bronze bars matted with disgusting yellow hairs. The godhunters grabbed a few and backtracked to the cave mouth, drying their clothes in the harsh sun as Voryn examined the golden strands. The death cultist discerned they weren't really hairs, but oversized filaments of nervous tissue. Meanwhile, Anax busied himself summoning a glowing-blue magical servitor.
Preparations made, the trio entered the dungeon proper. Inside was a wide chamber that split off in two directions. To the east, a dark room. To the west, a huge set of brass double-doors with a bloodstained lion's mouth in lieu of a lock. At the far end of the chamber was a huge metal statue of a lion-headed man. The trio realised it was a clockwork mechanism for juicing the adrenochrome from human sacrifices - the Nephilim backed their currency with the delicious substance. It didn't take long to figure out there was still someone inside the iron maiden. Though Anax's servitor nearly exsanguinated the poor bastard by accident, the godhunters eventually pried the torture device open.
AngelofromAA
A bloodied slave tumbled out onto the floor. After feeding him some water and giving assurances that Barber (probably) wouldn't eat him, he gave his name as Dismas. He'd been taken by his latifundium's overseers to be sacrificed after they found him stealing food for his pregnant wife. The farm always needed more blood to bless the harvests, or to satiate the hunger of passing Nephilim. The slavedrivers had thrown him into the iron maiden and then wandered off to investigate the offering hall to the east. They'd never come back.
Assuming the slavers had met a suitably grisly fate, the trio equipped the slave with an obsidian dagger and had him swear allegiance to Anax. Happy to progress from chattel slavery to feudal serfdom, their new hireling followed dutifully along.
The offering room was a strange sight. More of that golden "hair" hung in clumps from the ceiling, hanging above a large fissure in the stone floor from which the sound of running water could be heard. Peering upwards the godhunters noticed the corpses of the overseers and some wild aquilops tangled up in the ceiling. Anax ordered his magical servitor to go first, whereupon it was ensnared by a noose of golden rope. A barrel-seized teratoma appeared in the ceiling, a mass of gnashing teeth and tumorous flesh. The Barnacle reeled in the ghostly apparition like a hungry fisherman, until Barber killed it with an arrow.
The adventurers cut down the dead slavedrivers, looting them for jewellery and clothing for the half-naked Dismas. Unwilling to clamber down the dark chasm, they retreated back to the brass doubledoors. Dismas explained the doors only unlocked if a human's worth of blood was poured into the lion's mouth. So trio juiced the dead slavers - they were fresh enough to provide sufficient vitae. Then Anax decided to experiment by throwing the corpse of the Barnacle inside, promptly gunking up the delicate mechanisms and permanently destroying the iron maiden.
Through the doors was a trashed shrine dedicated to AZOTH, power of universal remedy, transmogrification and creator of chimeras. The golden ritual circle had been defaced by scratch marks, and was covered in a foul mixture of matted golden hair and the rotting corpses of priests.
Upon investigating the mass grave, several bundles of hair and flesh stirred to life. The horrible Bezoars attacked the godhunters, gnashing filthy teeth onto exposed flesh. Anax and Barber laid about with sword and spear while Voryn distracted the sentient teratomas by animating a dead exultant.
After a frenzied few seconds the creatures were dispatched with minimal casulaties - save poor Dismas who had his shoulder masticated by one of the little monsters. Voryn dosed him on painkillers while Anax explored to the north, finding a collapsed stairwell, a rack of bronze clubs and a dismembered urmahlullu with an enchanted antenna sword. He took the lion-man's blade for himself and armed Dismas with one of the bludgeons. After scraping all the gold from the ritual circle, the party explored a door to the south, finding a strange room containing glass tanks filled with various specimens - flayed dwarves, eyeless humans and even a lion.
All of the tanks were decorated with blinking red lights, with the exception of the lion's which was green. Presumably the bigt was still alive, kept in storage for the chimeric experiments that created Shamash's army of urmahlullus. As they explored the room - looting silvered surgical implements - they noticed another dark chasm leading to a deeper level. Before they could examine it properly, the skinned dwarves began reanimating - knocking over their glass prisons in a shower of amniotic fluid.
The godhunters laid into the Skinnermen, but discovered their undead flesh would melt steel weapons. Anax ordered his servitor to wrestle one of the zombies to the ground, before everyone else beat it to death with rocks. Voryn dispatched the second by hijacking its movement and sending it falling down the chasm. Without waiting to see if it survived, the party toppled the lion's tank down the hole then threw down a second for good measure, crushing both the zombie and a very confused cat.
After healing their injuries, the godhunters decided to descend down the hole. They sent Dismas to gather the hair-nooses from the dead Barnacles in the offering chamber, weaving the nervous tissue into makeshift ropes. Barber descended first, confirming nothing alive nor undead remained in the pile of pulverised meat and broken glass. The rest followed suit, barring Anax's servitor. The glowing man was left waiting above, posed to drop yet another glass tank at the wizard's command.
The roar of rushing water filled the dark hallway the dropped into, a subterranean current ran below an elevated bridge to the north. Further down the river was a huge waterwheel, shaped like dozens of huge bronze hands scooping the water. When Anax moved to cross the river he narrowly dodged the noose-nerve of another Barnacle, the clever tumour had located itself slightly offset to the bridge - if it had grabbed him he'd be hanging over the fast-flowing current by now. Thinking quickly, Dismas scooped up a chunk of masonry and managed to smote the beast before it snared his liege lord.
Thanking his manservant, Anax tasked him with undermining the bridge as a trap while he explored further. The wizard-king came to a jammed door that, with a few solid kicks, opened into a collapsed room. The six-fingered hand of an exultant protruded from the rubble, accompanied by a muffled voice.
Imad Awan
The crushed man explained he was Azazel, high-priest of Shamash. Anax's magic-detecting vision discerned the cultist was an incredibly powerful caster, but had very little pneuma remanining. He'd evidently being constantly channeling the powers of AZOTH to sustained his squashed anatomy. The wizard-king moved to kill the exultant, so Azazel gave him a counter-offer. He wanted to die, but not while aware of how miserable and deformed his once beautiful body had become; give him blissful oblivion and he'd spend his remaining magic to buff someone.
Voryn agreed to dose him on his special brew of insect-derived opioids, so the elf cast an enlarging spell on Anax. The wizard grew a foot taller, grimacing as his muscles and bones painfully expanded. Honoring their bargain, he used his magic sword to administer a coup de grâce to the comatose exultant.
Withdrawing across the now undermined bridge, the godhunters investigated the room adjacent to the huge waterwheel. Within was a gigantic Baghdad Battery hooked up to an array of gears and turbines. The battery wasn't charging - a mess of tangled golden was jamming the mechanism. When the party moved to clear the filth out, another clutch of Bezoars promptly ambushed them. Though Anax was badly gnawed, his supernatural vigour let him shrug it off. Long-suffering Dismas was nearly laid low again, but a flurry of arrows, rocks and sword blows saved him. Voryn healed him with even more drugs, the freedman's body somehow still no-selling addiction or overdose.
As the party cleared out the gears, the waterwheel whirred to life and began charging the battery. At that moment, Barber whispered a warning from the north. She'd spotted a huge thing across the river, nesting in a flooded pile of corpses and hair. The godhunters briefly freaked out upon realising Shamash was probably a stone's throw away. Anax, wanting to electrocute the Nephil with the battery, convinced everyone to hold position and wait for it to finish charging.
Unfortunately, the godling was not so obliging. Upon waking up, he reared to his full height of twelve feet tall - revealing his body was mattered in thousands of golden nerve endings and his eyeballs naught but empty sockets. Part of his sensory carpet brushed against Barber, and he immediately moved to tear her head off. But the deodand was fast, zooming away on all fours as her companions beat a hasty retreat across the bridge, the blind demigod in hot pursuit. He crashed into the Baghdad Battery before it had reached full charge, only receiving a mild shock that did nothing to slow him down.
The godhunters fell back in good order, assembling on the far side of the crumbling bridge. A rain of arrows and rocks did little to stop the Nephil, but half a ton of glass, bronze and biological sludge did - Anax's servitor dropping a tank straight onto Shamash's head. Concussed, but not dead, the godling surged towards the party - outstretched hand reaching for the wizard-king. Then the bridge collapsed.
The giant fell into the churning waters; huge arms reached out for handholds, the god desperately trying to pull himself out of the river. He might've succeeded, if not for Anax pitching a brick into his nose. With an almighty crash, Shamash sank beneath the dark water and was dragged screaming beneath the waterwheel. The godhunters cheered as he was crushed to death, dispatching Barber to dive beneath the water and saw his head off. Thus retrieved, Voryn and Anax cut open his skull and feasted upon his divine grey matter, before taking his ears as trophies of their deicide.
With an hour until the relief force arrived and found their god dead, the party hastened to explore the dungeon. They looted a necklace of gold coins from the nest of Shamash. Each was shaped like a tiny shackled man, a macbre reminder the currency was backed on a 1:1 ratio with the blood of an adult human. The final room was a treasure vault sealed behind a massive metal bulkhead. The door was flush to the ground and walls, with no discernible way of unlocking or opening it.
Consulting his Brontologion, Anax realised the door was being held closed by electromagnets. Unfortunately, with the battery destroyed, there was no way of opening it.
Or was there?
Francisque Millet
Lightning was the purest expression of strength. Where it landed, grass burns, trees split, and men died. It was the fire born of water, creation and destruction in one dread instant. When men first dreamt of power, it was lightning that filled their dreams.
Anax raised his left hand and the Thunder roared. The door flung open, crackling with electricity.
Inside was blood. Jars upon jars upon jars of adrenochrome-infused vitae. The fiscal reserves of an entire realm, the result of depravity on an unthinkable scale. Such sanguine riches could rebuild Shamash's domain if spent wisely, or bribe enough Nephilim to help establish an entirely new kingdom.
The godhunters exchanged a look. Anax turned to Dismas and gave an order. The freedman stepped into the treasure vault. He stared at the unfathomable wealth that surrounded him.
Then he smashed it all.
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