The Conquering WormClearly we hadn’t gamed out what happened when the PCs were eight years old, so the question that was on everyone’s mind was “Did -E. make a bunch of critical decisions for our characters, deprotagonizing us mercilessly?”
Also: “If deprotagonizing isn’t actually a word, why are we using it?”
When the characters, with the help of the psychic, accessed their memories, I sent them their 0-level character sheets from the beginning of the game (at this point about a year ago, real time), and told them that they now remembered what their Artificially Matured characters had gone through.
Here’s the map and I can talk a little about it:
- The whole thing was filled with toxic (but not instantly lethal) formaldehyde gas.
- There were apertures on the walls that periodically emitted explosive fireballs, and sections of corridor that had oven-like flame jets on timers.
- They were stalked by carnivorous mimes that scuttled silently along the walls and ceilings and fell on them like white-faced spiders to consume their flesh.
- They found creepy images and shrines of a cult dedicated to “incorruptible forms” -- people preserved by formaldehyde. The Incorruptibles theorized that the answer to the Drake Equation was naturally occurring formaldehyde gas: they were intrigued by the idea of entire civilizations being sterilized, their planets turned into silent, undecaying mausoleums by clouds of drifting, interstellar poison.
- There was a “trap” that required the characters to solve a simple substitution code to prevent the entire level from being flooded with poison gas -- but the code didn’t work and the level flooded anyway (there was secret door leading out)
- There was a chamber full of gas masks, but the filters were toxic -- wearing the mask would be fatal.
- Than ran into Monoids and other low level robots that were, at this power level, formidable opponents.
- They moved into even more morbid rooms, finding a giant red worm that ate mimes and tried to eat the PC’s. They were being watched on monitors by a theater full of weeping, faceless angels (mimes, the worm, and the hopeless angels from Poe’s poem about the pointlessness of life and the inevitability/ascendency of death).
- The whole thing was an unfair and merciless death trap, and the characters died again and again as they fought toward the exit.
When they died they would suffer until they lost consciousness and then appear in a small chamber with a one-way observation mirror, a chair, a table, and a white projection screen.
They would watch their death on the 8mm projection. The person running the reel-to-reel machine wasn’t easy to see (they’d have to turn around and look into the light), but he was cheerful and friendly and advised them that if they found the whole thing too painful, they could press the Red Button.
The Red Button would kill them. In real life. It would end their suffering.
He told them that it was pointless, really -- they’d just keep dying and dying, hurting and hurting. They would do better to end it all and “punch out” before they lost their minds.
They tried a few things:
- One character asked if they could just stay in the video room. Nope: they’d get dumped back into the dungeon without ceremony after about 5 minutes.
- Another asked if they could just keep suiciding and hang out there. No, said the Projectionist: If you die “on purpose” you end up coming to my “friend” -- Tick-Tock-Mr.-Clock. Tick-Tock-Mr.-Clock isn’t nice. He puts barbed wire in your eyes and burns your tongue out with a hot poker. The first time. After that, it gets worse.
- Okay... what about breaking out of the projection room? There’s a door, right? Answer: There’s a door, yes -- but it won’t get you anywhere but back in the dungeon (the mutant girl did break out, and escaped capture, eventually finidng an air vent that ... dropped her back in the dungeon)
- Who’s watching us in the mirror?
At this point, the Projectionist was revealed as Cheeseburger (the talking, sentient Cheeseburger). And Cheeseburger... didn’t know there was a mirror in the room. He couldn’t see it. To him, it didn’t exist.
Weird.
The Gunslinger put his face up to it, and looked into a small room. It was empty except for some dusty shelves -- but on one of the shelves was a golden head: the head of the weird robot girl from the Ace of Pinups they’d seen in the Clock of Fate.
She looked at him, with eyes slowly-slowly-slowly dimming -- going out, and he heard the song “The Division Bell” in his mind. Reflected in her dying eyes, he saw an image of incredible complexity and beauty that was well beyond his understanding.
No idea what to make of that, but clearly this was NOT part of Cheeseburger or The Horn’s plan. This was something outside it. Something potentially important.
In one of the last times they died, one of the PC’s broke into the mirror, disrupting the simulation and abruptly returning him to the party.
They meet the HornHaving refused to snuff it, they finally crossed a bridge into the Horn, itself. It was a massive thing, too big to really see. As they entered it, they could see that its surface was ... moving somehow... as if it were covered with a strange swarm of insects or worms. In the darkness it was impossible to make out anything beyond frenetic, disturbing movement.
They moved through chambers that showed them images of what it would give them if they served it and survived: it would give Civilization power sources -- massive metal hearts. It would also give them metal hearts -- that would make them tougher and more resilient, but would compel them to serve it and to be part of the “System” that fed it children.
Jolop The Horn Feeds On Innocence.
They were given the opportunity to betray their classmates (again) by choosing names and eating “symbolic” cheeseburgers representing the doomed children.
They refused, and entered the final chamber where they were met by four “Sphereoid” robots (way, way above power level) that were fitted with terrifying flesh-destroying weapons (“auto-flay cannons”) The Spheroids were marked with card suits, all black, and called themselves the Dark Queens.
They were offered a feast at a table set with terrifying surgical instruments and then death: they had not sacrificed any children. They would die here -- and then, in ten years, they would return to this level and die for real, screaming in an agony they would not wake up from.
The Dark Queens begged them to reconsider -- after all, surely their classmates would not spare them!
The PC’s prepared to fight and die, but as they steeled themselves for more horrific pain, one of them saw the metal robot head they’d seen in the Observation Room. It telepathically told them that there was another way: The Wall of Heroes.
The Wall of HeroesThe PCs asked about the Wall of Heroes. The Queens laughed! Where had they heard of that?! Yes. It is a thing. Here is how it works:
You are not the first ones to stand in defiance against us -- to refuse to sacrifice your classmates, to raise your fist against our gleeful atrocity and the abomination we serve. For those who have such ... fortitude... we have a special deal: you will live. Your first and second trial will be glorious. You will arrive here, ready to fight, certain that you’ve earned the power to survive.
But you will still be powerless to face such as us, and when you find yourself in this very chamber -- in real life, we will subdue you, but not kill you. Instead, your flesh will be stripped off. Your body will be violated with shards of metal and glass. You will be harmed in a thousand ways, each unendurable -- and you will be added to the Wall with the writhing, mindless forms of a thousand “heroes” before you. You will decorate the Horn’s exterior, writhing and screaming forever, with your only escape from degradation and torment being to lose your mind.
That would be their contract: ten years of success and achievement to make their eternity of suffering for their “principles” even more sweet and ironic.
The PC’s chose to join the Wall of Heroes. They “remembered” setting the rest of the game in motion.