The Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 14: A Perfect World

The explorers re-enter the cave. This time they take a different path - and get lucky. The path winds down and down, deep into the moon. At a certain point the livingstone gives way to a weird semi transparent crystal - the walls and floors are all made of this material. 

Renko finds a towel and a mug lying on the tunnel floor - all made of this crystal. It looks like the crystal substance slowly takes over other substances and replaces them. They take the mug and towel in case they are worth something. They enter a wide tunnel that is only partially taken over by crystals - it is filled with about 20 cryogenic chambers. Inside are sleeping humanoids that they do not recognise but are not entirely human. 

They debate whether to disturb any of them but finally decide to try to wake one up. Sissy manages to interpret the controls and they open one of the caskets. The inhabitant sits up and screams - and a weird black creature leaps from its throat, killing the humanoid. They rake the little creature with fire - it dies bleeding green acid onto the floor, shrieking. They decide not to wake any more of the cryogenic chambers, and worry about the strange aliens.

They come into what looks like a loading bay - again it is partially turned into the weird pink transparent crystal. There are two industrial looking loading exoskeletons there - made entirely out of the pink crystal. 

Renko and Sissy try to get them going and with Vitreous Orange's help they manage to get both started. Sissy and Vitreous suit up and stomp along behind Renko. The bay turns into a silver torus that they clomp along - past a number of mummified figures with their dessicated brains plugged into some sort of complicated looking computers. 

Next is a large square black chamber - it looks long abandoned but somebody made their home here. There are dozens of book sized black boxes with wires and headsets attached to them. Renko puts one on his head and is hums into life. Renko sees in front of him three menu options - in an alien language that he can strangely read - 

1. Encyclopedia
2. Relaxation
3. Perfect World

He takes off the headset and puts it aside for later. 

They head down a corridor and too late, sense movement above them. Camouflaged in the transparent crystal ceiling is a transparent crystal humanoid creature with an elongated skill like head. It lunges onto Renko, and rips into his armour. The others mow at the creature with their bolters, and it explodes in a wave of acid which pour over Renko burning him badly. But luckily his porcelain armour manages to neutralise the acid and he survives with only a deeply painful bruise from where the creature landed on him. 

A crystal alien, dancing on the edge of copyright

They carry on and find a control room - with multiple weird crystal dials and levers. At the far end is a strange organic egg shaped object. Sissy has managed to find the x-ray setting on his Porcelain mask and he sees that there is some sort of spider shaped creature writhing inside. They mow it down and it dies, shrieking in a pool of its own acid. 

They examine the room, and experiment with some of the switches. There is a low hum and it looks like some sort of deep engine in the moon has been activated. They move a crystal and feel a lurch. From outside their polybodies report that the moon has shot up about another 100 meters into the air. The entire Near Moon camp is in uproar. They try to fiddle with the controls again and the moon lurches about 500 meters to the west. At this point Renko panics and quickly shuts down all the engines before something catastrophic happens.

They feel they have explored the moon but they still haven't found the mysterious Memories-Best-Left-Forgotten. Renko tries the mysterious headset - he looks at the Encyclopedia and finds a lot of information about an ancient alien civilization, looking to escape their doomed world many hundreds of light years distant, tens of thousands of years ago. 

Then Renko tries the 'Perfect World' setting and a message comes up 'Do you Wish to Enter the Perfect World?' - Renko says yes and disappears. 

The others flip out. Vitreous Orange tries the same and also disappears. His polybody immediately loses track of his other body. Sissy, somewhat shocked, now only with Orca Malificent, grabs the walker and the headsets and heads for the surface.

Meanwhile - Renko and Vitreous find themselves standing together in a weird dusty city surrounded by space suited figures. They try to ask a stranger where they are.

"Why, don't you know? This is the Spectrum Palace, my friend."

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 13: Moon

The group travel through the swamps under the moon and Life-Is-A-Game has some porters produce a tall ladder which they stamp into the swamp, and lean up against the moon. The two polybodies, Sissy and Vitreous Orange, decide to take only one body each to the moon for safety's sake.

As they climb up the ladder, the gravity of the moon slowly overtakes that of the Earth, and at a certain point they find they need to carefully flip around on the ladder in order to complete the climb, now downwards, to the surface of the moon. They all manage it, and find themselves upside down on the dusty and rocky surface of the Near Moon, the world and swamp sitting above them.

They decide to travel northwards (given they are the south pole). After a short time they come across a field of strange crystalline rhombezoid bulbs, that smell like petrol. They are curious but decide to give them a wide berth and enter a deep chasm, where they hear scuttling and scurrying - in the shadows they see innumerable dog sized crabs, keepingpace with them, keeping a low profile, but undoubtedly stalking them.

They decide they don't want to fight that many crabs, so they search for something they can use to throw them off while they escape - they find an old, slightly stale cherry pie, and throw that in a side chasm, distracting the crabs while they flee to freedom. 

They come over a rise to what looks like a large crater filled with ash-grey writhing worms, each as big as a cow. They go through their inventory to try to work out if they have some useful device to clear away the worms, but find that they actually are carrying very little - in fact they don't even really have any supplies and they are making such slow going they will quickly run out of food and water.

Sissy and Vitreous Orange's polybodies immediately go to the market and buy supplies of food (it is useful being in instantaneous telepathic contact with a second body) and bring them to the ladder. The exploratory team returns to the ladder and passes the food up. 

Newly supplied, the explorers return to the crater with the writhing worms. But their appetite to kill or clear out the worms is gone and they decide instead to go around the crater, and enter another crevasse. After a few hours they come across a settlement - it looks like a neo-neanderthal settlement! There are two guards with stone spears who stand to attention and challenge the intruders. forgetting that he is the only one who looks like a neo-neanderthal any more, Renko steps forward and tries to explain that they have come to find the sky-keys in order to fulfil the ancient prophecy and save the world. 

It goes down badly. Deeply irritated, and convinced the adventurers are frauds, the neanderthals throw rocks and spears at them until they retreat. They decide against a massacre of their kinfolk, and fall back in good order with a few light wounds from thrown rocks and spears. 

Renko doles out healing potions to repair Vitreous Orange and Sissy, and they decide that peace with their kinfolk is too important to pass up.

They return to the settlement, this time holding a great gift - the Citrine Soul Sphere. The shaman of the moon-neanderthals steps forward - he has a matching sphere! Friendship is struck and the neo-neanderthals offer them food and shelter. The shaman, Mongo, speaks to them of the sky keys. He has heard the spirits speak that one can be found in the palace of the Spectrum Satraps. They rest, and in the morning the neo-neanderthals offer them supplies, and a guide, Hawk the Slayer, to take them to the Door into the moon.

Hawk leads them north for a couple of days, finally to a door set into the north pole of the moon. There is a lock in the form of a puzzle, which Hawk admits none of them know how to open. Renko ponders the puzzle for three full days before finally cracking it - the door opens and a ladder leads downwards into the bowels of the moon.

For safety's sake they leave a mirror at the surface so they can use Renko's mirror-travel spell to escape the moon if the find themselves trapped. 

Using the lights on their powered porcelain armour, they navigate into the depths. After clambering down the ladder for a long, long time they find themselves in a chamber of carved stone with about twenty exits of different sizes. They debate for a while which way to go before choosing a tunnel at random. They clamber along it until it terminates at a door, which they open and find themselves in a livingstone tunnel. They carefully go along, and their care is rewarded when they realise that a section of tunnel up ahead is actually the maw of some enormous creature, lying in wait. Wanting to avoid a fight, they double back to the large chamber and choose another route.

Renko and sissy both try to use their intuition and tracking to work out the right way, and argue for a long time over whether tunnel 8 or tunnel 4 is the right one. Finally, because they can't decide they go down tunnel 12. This tunnel opens up into a wider tunnel, with carved sections of livingstone, and sections of liquid walls held in place with stuckforce. There are long sections of corridors with strange cycsts where the dessicated bodies of six-armed humanoids are curled up. They don't search or disturb them for fear of zombies. further down the tunnel they find abandoned habitats - abandoned recently (last few years) of some humanoid civilization. 

Finally the tunnel terminates at - a spaceship. A huge spaceship is stuck through the moon like a pin through an orange. They enter the craft, looking for valuables. In the cabin there are only skeletons but they are approached by a weird armless bipedal droid, who shouts 'Aaaaaaah!' at them continually, though seemingly in a friendly manner. An open trap door leads them to a large open bay, where there are numerous empty bays, and a room-sized box held by clamps that looks like it is ready to be released.

The box speaks - it asks if they are authorised personnel of this spaceship. Renko says yes, and the box asks it to confirm completion of final directive. Renko, cautiously, asks exactly what the final directive is. The box is extremely reticent at revealing this but finally reveals that it is a starkiller bomb, and its final order is to explode. Renko points out that this will kill them all and destroy their world, to which the bomb protests that their lives are short anyway and to detonate is its only purpose. After some negotiation of the possibility of the bomb detonating on a long timer (say, a thousand years) or going to distant star and detonating it instead, Renko finally decides not to let it blow up at all. With the protesting cries of the starkiller bomb behind them, they leave the spaceship. The weird screaming droid follows them, much to their annoyance, but they worry it might be useful so they let it tag along. 

They retrace their steps and take another tunnel - and find themselves traversing a tunnel that they don't notice at first that they are walking among toxic poisonous eels, writhing on the ground. By the time they realise this they are too deep in to easily back out. They decide to push on and manage with great luck and skill to make it past the eel nest. the screaming robot just blunders through, oblivious. 

They find themselves at a wall of stuckforce with no way past. Beyond they can see what looks like an enormous musical organ made of bone. But they can't work out how to traverse the stuckforce wall and they don't want to return through the eels so they activate their failsafe and use the mirror they are carrying to return to the door, suprising a sleeping Hawk. On the bright side, they manage to lose the annoying shouting droid.

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 12: Second Breakfast

The Pyramid Beyond Time and Space

They ponder the entrance to the Blue Pyramid. Vitreous Orange decides to leave two of his polybodies behind. Orca Malificent (formerly Dante Thunderstone) ties a rope to him and stay behind. Renko, Sissy and VO enter the tunnel. There is a wall of sticky mist and they push through to find themselves in an infinite corridor of curved translucent blue stone, stretching out to infinity. They look behind them and see - exactly the same. The rope is gone from VO's body. Back outside the pyramid Orca pulls the rope - more and more rope keeps coming, even more than there originally was attached to VO. Inspired by the thought of free rope, Orca keeps pulling.

Meanwhile, inside the blue tunnel, the group try to examine the wall, but find when they turn, there is now a tunnel in front of them. They turn back to where they were and the tunnel is now back in front of them. VO tries looking up - and finds he is now lying on the floor of an infinite tunnel. The others, however, now seem to be standing on the walls instead of the floor. 

They continue experimenting in this way until Sissy expresses a need for some food, and a door appears in the tunnel. They quickly duck through and find a small room with several cushioned pods, that look like they are designed for people to rest in. There is a table laid out with a sumptuous meal - but they decide not to try it. Sissy decides that this is a magical wishing place, and wishes for treasure. Another door appears and they duck through to the next chamber.

This room is empty except for a single blue plinth with what looks like a covered parrot cage on it. They withdraw the cover to see a glass specimen cover over a severed human head. As they lift the cover, the eyes of the head flicker open and he begins to scream.

They step back, and the head stops screaming and calls out to them, begging to be killed. They ask him what is going on, and he explains he is Carter Holmes, and an extremely evil man who deserves to die. Renko asks what exactly he did that was so evil and Holmes rattles off a half dozen appalling crimes, including the vivisection of children, etc. Holmes explains that he can only die if they devour his brain. They ask if he has a sky key, and he says yes, and the memory of it is in his brain - which they can get if they eat his brain. He also says that he has magical powers which can be theirs if they devour his mind.

Needless to say - they are not keen. They are fairly convinced that eating Holmes' brain will result in them being infected by some sort of alien parasite. Sissy wishes for an exit, and a door appears. They go through the slimy mist and find themselves back at the entrance, where Orca is still pulling on what is now a giant mound of rope.

They leave the horse behind and decide to leave. They figure they can always return to get the sky key from Holmes' head if they are unable to learn it anywhere else in the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

They head back to Behemoth Shell through the dark pine forests. On the way one of the fast horses gets loose, and is lost. they decide against going after it, and make haste out of the woods.  That night, they hear howling of wolves, and a pack of wolves start to approach the camp, trying to pick off one of the horses. Weirdly, though, they are accompanied by and assisted by what looks like a flock of ten or so large red carpets, which try to wrap themselves around the terrified animal.

They drive the hunters off with a few well placed shots, and examine one of the carpets, which they killed with a clean shot. It looks like - a carpet with a hole in it. They are a bit nonplussed by this particular bit of weirdness, but set a watch and head back to Behemoth Shell as fast as they can.

They decide to head onwards to Moon-Facing ford as soon as they can, and set off as soon as they are rested and they've purchased supplies. They realise they've spent about six months in the UVG by now, and have collected half of the sky keys.

After two weeks of travel, in lands that they are pleased to dosciver actually has grasses their animals and porcelain walkers can forage in, they come to the Moon Facing ford. This is a large fast running river in a deep ford, running north to south, beyond which they can see the Near Moon - a small moon (but still enormous) that hovers just above the Earth about a week westwards.

At the rivers edge, they see a drowned corpse tangled in a tree - left there by some flood. The body is wearing some sort of large metallic amulet that doesn't seem to be affected by the slime and mold covering the rest of the corpse. They remove it, and Renko does some quick analysis of it - it does appear to be magical and they take it. It doesn't occur to them to bury or retrieve the body.

They arrive at a small riverside kraal, inhabited by nomad quarterlings, small humanoids with furry feet who herd animals and live in yurts. They are very welcoming to the travellers, and are delighted by their stories. They feed them well and give them a bed for the night and are then delighted when Renko gives them breakfast, and then second breakfast from his automatic kitchen appliances.

They bid goodbye to the friendly midget nomads, and then head on to the larger kraal at the Moon Facing Ford. As they approach, two Spectrum Satraps stop them, and ask for their travel permits and licenses for their vehicles. Expecting a shakedown, they say they have none but they have never needed any. but the Straps simply ask them to pay a couple of hundred dollars, fill out a brief form, and then give them travel passes and vehicle passes for the entirety of the spectrum satrapy. All very painless and efficient.

The krall is celebrating the moon-tide, where the changing tides of the moon cause the flow of the river to change direction. It is a time of celebration and many local markets. Naturally, the caravan decides immediately to go on a week long binge. But first they decide to get some money from some of the fungal goods they collected. Renko also hires an assessor of goods to tell him about the amulet - apparently it can change into anything they wish - but once they decide on a thing it will be the only thing they can change it to.

They try to sell the rainbow spores but are unable to find a buyer. Sissy manages to sell a few bags of the blue fungal delicacy they collected from the polyhedral glasshouse. VO complains that he has been working for them for a month now and he still hasn't been paid. There is some discussion of an 'internship' but Vitreous Orange is not deferred. They agree to pay for his partying, but then they enter into an argument about whether Vitreous Orange should pay for his own food and accommodation - which is kind of the last straw for him.

Then the festival begins and all arguments are forgotten as the drugs and ale flow. Sissy and Vitreous Orange are both gifted with portable bardstones with a recording of the Epic of Frondal (an ancient quarterling legend) on it. Renko unfortunately gets into a game of chance and loses Sissy's walker in a game of chance.

Sissy is naturally outraged, and demands his walker back. They argue for a time and finally Renko hits on a cunning plan. He inscribes the rune of returning on th eamulet, and then orders it to be turned into a very large gold ingot. He then uses the ingot to buy the walker back from the quarterling trader he lost it to, and then they hightail it out of town. Once safely out of town, Renko casts returning on the ingot, and then turns it back to the amulet. A perfect scam.

A day or so out, they are caught up to by a posse of 20 or so of the trader's family and clan - they demand to search them for the ingot. Renko is very reasonable and allows them to search through the camp. Eventually the apologise, shamefaced, and return to the ford. The caravan decide they might try this scam in every location from now on.

They come across a community of quarterlings as they get closer who seem to have begun building some sort of low brick ziggurat. Their leader greets them, and asks for alms - they are seeking to build a ziggurat to break the power of the Near Moon. Renko gives them a few coins and they head to the Near Moon.

The Near Moon

As they approach the moon, the great tides affect them in different ways - nausea, memory loss, loss of balance. minor nut noticeable. Under the moon, in permanent shadow, are shallow swamps where the water cannot evaporate. Around the shadow of the moon, at the rim of the swamps, in a crescent, is a settlement, clustered around a large shimmering black dome. People come and go from the dome and as they get closer they learn it is a luxury pleasure palace of the Spectrum Satraps - which they can stay in for a price. They agree to pay, and enter, and find rooms for themselves and shelter for their animals. The place is called the Spectrum Lodge, and as they quench their thirst at the local bar they find themselves talking to Life-Is-A-Game, the quarterling bartender who seems unnaturally wise and does not behave like a quarterling - rumour is that she is an ultra from the north. They ask her about sky keys and she says she does know the location of one - and she will tell them if they go to the Near Moon and find her friend, Memories-Best-Forgotten. Once she (Memories-Best-Forgotten) is brought back, she (Life-Is-A-Game) will tell them where to find the sky key. Life-Is-A-Game is happy to provide transport to the surface of the moon.

Life-Is-A-Game

The caravan, happy to have a lead to a third sky key (that doesn't involve eating brains), readily agree... 


  

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 11: Vitreous Orange

The survivors take stock of the aftermath of the apocalyptic battle. The Porcelain Princes have retreated, but in good order, taking most of their riches with them but leaving a smattering of displaced polybodies and slaves behind. The gnomes and rebels declare victory, and declare their new citadel the Obsidian Serai. Jeshek, warrior poet, is declared first citizen and heads up the revolutionary council. But he is strangely peaceful - he seems to be unwilling to make any preparations for a counterattack or to prepare his people for further war.

Dante Thunderstone, meanwhile, is different - he has taken on a brutish, warlike demeanor, and insists on being called Orca Malificent, warlord of the fifth age. He says he existed as an Ultra for millennia, charged with protecting the seekers of the sky keys, in preparation of the end of days. His soul seems to have merged with Dante's. The group try to work out if Dante is still in there somewhere, and Orca snarls that he is, and perhaps someday he will not be so afraid to come out.

Sissy, punctured as a colander, is declared DOA, but in gratitude for his services to the revolution, the gnomes transfer his consciousness to a rogue polybody (a clone that had no emerged consciousness of it's own) and Sissy wakes up in a kind of weak and shaky body. The gnomes were not fully competent in the machinery, so Sissy is a little unsure of himself, but he at least is alive. His porcelain mask is a reflective silver. He decides to invest in a second body while he's at it - and is now Sissy-1 and Sissy-2. The polybody experience is strange to him, as is inhabiting a completely new body, but he vows to adapt.

Lisciac is well and truly dead, and is buried in a mass grave with the other fallen of the revolution.

Renko had stepped back into the mirror world at the first sign of trouble, and lived to fight another day. The Obsidian Gnomes, out of gratitude for his assistance in creating the mirror door, gift him with some necromantic rituals and equipment they located at the Serai - some sort of proto-porcelain resurrection equipment, including a pendant that seems to transfer souls and coptic jars useful in moving consciousnesses from one body to another.

They decide they need some muscle and find Vitreous Orangewear, a loose conglomeration of three polybodies, left behind in the evacuation - two of them based off an emergent long suppressed original personality, and the third a half-joined semi emergent personality in a dwarven body. They advance them enough cash to buy all their bodies armour.

Meanwhile, Renko reminds the rebels of their promise to provide them with the sky key. The gnomes gladly oblige - showing Renko and Sissy the moves to the second part of the sky key dance. Of course this confirms their suspicion that the sky key they were sold previously was a fake, but since Ish and Lisciac are both dead, there didn't seem any real recompense they could claim.

Renko works on activating the magical kitchen appliances and manages to get the breakfast setting working - he can produce any breakfast on demand, enough to keep one person fed continually. Sissy tries to learn from travellers what rumours there are. The place is rife with spies and ambassadors, and there are strong rumours the the Porcelain Princes are preparing for a counter attack.

They decide to leave the Obsidian Serai as soon as possible, before any more violence occurs. They provision up and head westward as quickly as they can, traversing the Rust Storm to the Way Stone. The tents are long gone, Laszlo having long packed up and left, so they shelter as best they can and push westwards to Fallen Umber.

This is the ruins of once great civilization, ground almost flat by time and covered by drab mushrooms and fungi. The very air is steeped in dullness and ennui. 

They arrive at Fallen Umber, and look for any sources of food as they are almost out. There do not seem to be any travellers or local villages. They search the ruins and then hear a sound - a lone, huge hulking shambling humanoid mound approaches, it has a human like form but no apparent head. It is covered in sprouting mushroom, toadstools and puffballs. It looks like it is readying to attack, but Sissy steps forward and tries to communicate with it. He explains they want food and supplies. For a moment it seems torn, and then points to their ponies and holds up two fingers. Sissy manages to negotiate down to one pony. The creature falls on the terrified creature and kills it, and then gestures for them to follow it - it leads them to a very well apportioned farm of fungi, and then it rends the creature into bits and throws the blood bone and viscera all over the field, before washing itself in the same. 

The trade is done - the creature allows them to fill up with mushrooms as supplies. They try to ask it if there are any places around here of interest - archeological sites for example - the creature thinks for a moment and then leads them to a large flat plinth where it clears off the covering mold to reveal a map of the area - it shows several sites but they hone in on what looks like a large valley where a city seems to reside, two days out from the trail. They decide to check it out.

That night they set camp and Renko loses a childhood memory to the drab sadness of a lost civilization.

The next day they set off and within two days they arrive at the Hall of the Umber King. This seems to be a valley of ruins covered in rainbow covered fungal spores. They see people wearing face masks gathering spores in large sacks. Others seem to be wandering around, in varying states of dessication, in a daze. Various dessicated corpses lie around, covered in multicolored fungus and spores.

They hail the spore gatherers, who explain they are gathering the spores to sell - they think they might sell them westward at the Near Moon, as they have heard of trouble at the last Serai. Sissy asks if it is a drug, and they say yes - they offer him some and he tries it - he experiences a profound sense of sweet sadness, a powerful longing and sweet regret for times lost that can never be regained. He names it 'Madeleine'. It is highly addictive.

They negotiate to buy a sack for $1000. The gatherers are chatty and helpful and one of them, Hanuman, strikes up a friendship with Sissy and shares with him the location of a tunnel where some particularly great spores can be gathered.

The group debate whether to capture spores but decide instead to press on - the map showed them there was a place called the Azure garden a few days away, and they decide to head there.

The Azure Garden turns out to be an enormous Geodesic dome greenhouse, long since shattered with only the livingstone frame remaining, filled with a forest of blue fungi. There are rodents of unusual size lounging around on flat rocks in the sun, but they flee as the travellers approach. Sissy is an expert on plants and botany, and is able to identify the blue fungus as a delicacy - he reckons they could gather it and sell it at their next destination.

They spend two days scraping out the edible parts of the blue fungi and come away with fours sacks of the stuff. They decide to leave at this point, and head back to Fallen Umber. They stay the night there, avoiding the shambling creature (Garry Shambling), and then leave for Behemoth Shell, where they are hoping there is a settlement they can acquire supplies at. The mushroom wastelands give way to low hills and scattered pine forests. On the way they encounter a large herd of grazing gastropods - at least cow sized. They wonder if they should slaughter one to eat, but they decide against it and push on to Behemoth Shell. There is still no grazing for their animals, but they reach the shell in good time. True to name, it is a mountain sized gastropod shell with a small settlement and encampment scattered over it, and in tunnels inside it.

They are welcomed by a local of the Great Folk, the local snail farmers. His name is Nen, and he finds them a small cave to shelter in, for a small fee. 

They explore local trade goods and buy supplies. Nen shows them where they can buy clockwork brain worms - Sissy and Renko both buy one (for $1000 apiece) and insert them int heir ears. The worms burrow in and cause brief but aginizing pain before Sissy feels an increase to his charm and confidence, and Renko feels smarter. They wonder whether to buy more but their funds are dwindling - they have less than $5k left of the $14k they left the Porcelain Citadel with.

They ask Nen about any Sky Keys, but he is unaware of any here. He does mention a local curiosity - the Ideal Island, a floating island on which there are rumoured to be fabulous treasures deep inside the dark pine forests to the north. Renko is skeptical - he wants to know if anyone has returned alive from this amazing sounding island, but they decide to explore it anyway.

They set out the next day, their walkers navigating the pine trees nimbly. Renko is disgusted that Sissy doesn't seem to be carrying his fair share of cargo and after a brief argument they reorganise the carrying of supplies. 

Deep in the forest they are awakened by a snuffling noise and find that some small dingo like creatures have been eating their money - they eat $66 worth of treasure and then flee into the night. They redouble the watch and push on the next day.

They see the island from afar - it rises above the earth as a flat disk of earth, tethered by strands of marble, rock, and strange vines. They camp near it and that evening as they sit around the fire, the air grows unnaturally cold and from the darkness ride five figures - shrouded in mists, feathers and rags, twisting and distorted as if they were reflections in a swirling mirror. The first rider introduces itself as Malakite.

King Elre the Dreaming steps forward - and calls out to Malakite - "It is I, Elre - do you not remember me?"

Malakite greets Elre as the King of Alphaville, and says it has been many millennia since they last spoke. Malakite says that they must pay the tribute - the soul of a servant. They try to offer up a polybody but Malakite says that will not do. Sissy shows them the captured soul of a hero they were gifted by the Shamen of their tribe before they set out on their quest. Malakite licks his lips at the sight of it and says that it will do admirably as tribute. 

But Sissy and Renko, remembering it is something of a relic, rescind the deal. Malakite is disappointed, his appetite for the soul of a hero is palpable. But out of his old friendship for Elre, he says that they can leave unmolested, but they cannot pass this way again. They withdraw, confer with Elre about how tough these guys are (fairly tough) and decide they will go around the forest and approach the pyramid from another direction.

They withdraw and spend two days and approach the floating island from the east. They do not encounter the void riders again. They set aside the porcelain walkers and clamber up the marble tethers. Vitreous' first polybody falls - the others grab him and help pull him back to the surface, They soon reach the floating island - it seems to be covered with some sort of living skin, and covered in fruit bearing trees. Sissy quickly identifies the fruit as poisonous and warns the others not to eat it. In fact, there seem to be many toxic fumes and clouds on the island.

They carefully pick their way inland toward the blue pyramid - it is like an aztec pyramid made out of a slightly translucent blue material. The group touch it - it tingles slightly to the touch. Vitrious Orange finds a secret door - a block slides open and a passageway inside the pyramid opens up...      

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 10: The Face of Death

Having reluctantly decided to help the rebels take the Last Serai, they brainstorm ideas. Sissy, who still thinks this is an insane idea, tries to bribe one of the obsidian gnomes into selling him the secret of the sky key, but balks at the price.

They decide they are going to need an escape route, so Sissy and Dante acquire a full length mirror, to remain at the base, to enable them to escape via mirror world if the need it. 

Vulcan manages to rig up the porcelain walker to be operated by remote control. their plan is this - if they can get close enough to the death facing tower, they can transport the face of death through the mirror (somehow - the details will be worked out) without looking at it, to the Last Serai, evaporating the Porcelain Princes. After some long debate about who is going to attempt this mission, they decide to seal up the walker, and operate it by remote control from inside the walker, so they are in no danger of seeing the Face of Death. In order to ensure they have enough supplies they bring two horses along also.

After a week of travel they arrive at the foot of the Face of Death - a tower made of some awful unknown material. They do not look up but they see around the base some oily liquid oozes out of the tower. Dante circumnavigates the tower but there appears to be no other entrance other than perhaps the low tunnel the oily water comes out of. Lisciac tries to make her pet millipede look at the Face of Death through a mirror - to test a theory - and the millipede is instantly evaporated and destroyed.

The surface of the tower is irregular and very climbable. They have no idea what the face of death looks like - since they can't look at it, but they figure they can remove it somehow and lower it to the ground, ready to transport by mirror. Vulcan decides to clamber up, loops some rope around his waits, grabs the tower and ... is instantly vapourised. His possessions fall to the ground. 

The others pile back in the walker and immediately head back to the Rebel Base. The plan is a no-go. 

Jeshek, on hearing of his friend and allies death, immediately orders a revolutionary state funeral for Vulcan (closed casket).

The group decide on another plan - a mirror world based trojan horse. They return to the Last Serai, leaving the Rebel Army in a hidden gulley about three days away from the Serai. Once there, they rent a large warehouse deep beneath the earth, and ensure security is tight, and then open a portal through the mirror world, while Renko guides the rebel army, three or four at a time, into the Serai. Since they anticipate this will take a week or so, Sissy and Dante and Lisciac all decide to go on a week long bender at the Serai - they figure there will not be much partying after the revolution.  

Sissy does well - he manages to win another porcelain walker while gambling. Lisciac however, wakes up after a week of partying in an alleyway, with a suicide vest on and an earpiece telling him to wake up. 

The earpiece tells him that the mystery voice is from the Dwarven Army of the UVG, and that the traitors of the Army of Ultraviolet Revolutionaries are fighting the wrong revolution - the only true revolution must be a proletarian international one - and she must go down to the hidden army and tell them the revolution is off. She goes down and tries to sneak to the local police station but the earpiece warns her against any tricks. So she goes down to the warehouse and tries to explain the situation to Jeshek. Jeshek thinks for a moment and then lunges at Lisciac and tries to pull out the trip wire to disarm the vest. Unfortunately, he is too slow. The vest goes off. Lisciac is killed instantly, and Jeshek would die too, except he is protected by the Great spirit of Revolution, which shields him from the blast. Many others though, obviously less true of heart, are killed.

Sirens go off throughout the Serai. They have lost the element of suprise. Stunned, but realising their plight, Jeshek rushes out into the tunnels to attempt to raise the dwarfs and other proletarian workers to rise up against their oppressors. He is tremendously successful - all over the Serai workers feel the revolutionary fervour and rise up against the Princes. 

The Princes however, are well armed, well resourced and extremely well coordinated. Jeshek is swamped by a small squad of black-masked princes, and is cut down - but rises again, revived by loose nanobots (although he grows a vomish mechanical tail). He manages to fight his way out, but he is sickened by the blood and swears to be a man of peace from this time forth. 

Sissy tries to hide - he slinks away int he shadows, intending to strike down his enemies one by one from the shadows - but he opens a door which he assumes to be a broom closet he can hise in and it turns out to be a main corridor from the militia. Sissy fights furiously - but he is hit with a Porcelain Prince bolter, and starts to bleed out. He goes into a blood rage, mowing down his opponents with glee as the great void of death opens before him. 

Dante has formed a great bond with the crimson spirit having been possessed by it numerous times. He allows the spirit to partially inhabit him, and fights with the strength of five men. But even that is not enough to protect him from the warrior Princes bearing down on him, and finally he lets the last remnants of his ego go, and lets the great red spirit take him over. The great blood lust overtakes him and he knows no more...

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 9: "You Are a Member of the Rebel Alliance, and a Spy..."

The artefacts are so large that they devise a plan with Laszlo to get them back to the Last Serai from where he can arrange transport, by making a large sled and dragging it behind their two walkers. They send Jeshek with Ish and Lisciac back to the Waystone to wait for them to return, as Jeshek is a wanted person.

They head back through the storm, and lose many more items to the rust, including Dante's battleaxe. A couple of days away from the Serai they see an enormous trade wagon, in bright rainbow colours, wheeling north, guarded by two figures, one in red and one in blue, wearing space helmets - Spectrum Satraps.

They approach carefully and indicate they come in peace. The Satraps introduce themselves as Satrap 246 Clarity and Satrap 829 Azure. They are a trade mission and after some haggling Sissy manages to negotiate the purchase of two sacks of rainbow prisms and two sacks of shift-silks at a great price.

They overtake the slow wagon and after two more days they arrive at the Last Serai. Security is tight due tot he rebel raids, and the travellers are all scanned for signs of vome infections - naturally they pick up on Vulcan's reprogrammed vomish bird, and tell him to stand aside while they incinerate it. Vulcan tries to argue with them - but eventually he gives up and the two black-masked guards incinerate the bird with their blasters.

Inside the Serai, they sell the shift silks and prisms and make a killing, for once. Everyone is genuinely suprised that Sissy, who is supposed to be an excellent trader, actually manages to make them money. Laszlo is grateful for their help to bring the artefacts and agrees to host them in a weeklong drug and alcohol binge by way of thanks. They party for a week - it's all a blur - Renko and Dante are exhausted, and Sissy ends up imbibing a bad drink and permanently glows with ultraviolet light, which is an odd effect but unnoticeable most of the time. 

By the time they've sobered up Laszlo has made a deal with the Spectrum Satraps to transport the artefacts back to the Violet City. Sissy worries about the rust storm, and buys somepots of grease to protect his possessions. As a group they invest in porcelain pistols on the theory they will not rust. 

They sell their three biomechanical motorcycles at a good price and negotiate to buy a walker. They are buying from a porcelain prince who for whatever reason, wants to sell very cheaply ("it was my husband's walker, the prick...") and they get it for next to nothing. It can carry 2 people and 8 sacks of goods.

They take stock. They have 4 horses, 2 ponies, and 2 walkers, and are worth around $14k in total.

Renko meanwhile, has been working on the magical implements and manages to get them to make toast, but only toast. Still - it's an important step to his dream of being able to travel without supplies. 

Despite the restrictions due to the rebel assaults, they manage to buy a large number ($2000 worth) of guns for the revolution.  They don't bother to make them rust proof - their hope is that this bribe will be enough for the rebels to give them the Sky Key.

They set out again, west to Waystone. On the way, Sissy drops his jellyfish container and the toxic fluid starts to leak out. Luckily, he manages to patch it handily, and his pet survives. 

At Waystone they pick up Jeshek and the Nomads, and then head Northeast on the trail to the Death-Facing Passage. As they reach the valley, they stop and blindfold their horses so they don't die horribly. They enter the valley but after a couple ofhours they hear a strange babble and chatter - and suddenly a large vomish worm rushes at them. It lunges at Dante, and paralyses him with a strange blue statis electricity while the others hack at it. Jeshek and Vulcan climb onto their walkers and take potshots form up high while Sissy hacks at it with his knife. As it fights it babbles in a hundred different voices. They manage to kill it, but not before it devours all the Ka from Dante, leaving him a soulless husk! Luckily Renko is ready for this - he takes his Soul Stone, a gift from the tribe when they left on their quest, and uses it to find Dante's Ultra before it goes too far, and return it to his body. Dante splutters and comes back to consciousness.

They count their blessings that the Red War spirit did not awaken in Dante's body and slaughter them all.

Vulcan tries to remove the head of the great worm, in order to work out how to control any other worms they might come across - he is a specialist in Vomish engineering, but unfortunately he hacks the head to bits trying to get it off the body. They leave it where it is.

Carefully they enter the passage, and then wend their way up a side gulley until they find a low cave carved like a mouth. They enter, and are greeted by a rude and sassy living door. Jeshek tells them to let them in - these neanderthals are with him, and the door grudgingly obliges.

Inside, there are a number of very large caverns, lit by luminescent trees and inhabited by chattering spider monkeys (monkeys with eight limbs) and filled with delicious looking fruit. It is a hidden paradise. Numerous Diesel Dwarfs, rogue multibodies, radicalised nomads and Obsidian gnomes greet them. They gratefully accept the weapons.

While Vulcan tinkers with a worm controlling device, the others try to negotiate the Sky Key. The rebels know a good thing when they see it - they want the neanderthals to help them take over the Last Serai, and when they have overthrown the Porcelain Princes, they will hand over the Sky Key. 

This seems like a suicide mission to the caravan, and they start to brainstorm ideas... 

Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 8: Mercury Rising

They check their supplies again and ensure that they have enough to get to the Waystone - they know there is no grazing or water on the way so they carefully ensure they have enough supplies to get to Waystone. They are betting they will be able to find some supplies there - which is quite a gamble. The idea is that from there they will head Northeast to find the hidden rebel base. 

They find the trail again and push deeper and deeper into the terrible rust storm. They lose several metal items, rusted by contact with the raging rust storm, including the legendary sack-barrow.

Finally they approach the giant monolith at the centre of the storm. At the base of the monolith they see three large, sturdy and stormproof tents. Two guards in rugged military storm gear hail for them to stop, and ask them if they are friend or foe. They explain who they are, and ask if there is any shelter.

The guards lead them inside, clean them and offer them something to drink. They de-mask and reveal themselves to be two fierce, red-headed twins. They are ushered into the next tent where a Porcelain Prince and a Diesel Dwarf greet them. The Dwarf is in charge, and introduces himself as Laszlo Montague IV and his associate as Guilded 3-Era, a rogue slavebody consciousness. 

They mention they are seeking Sky-Keys and Laszlo mentions that the Obsidian Gnomes within the death-facing passage are rumoured to know where one is. Laszlo seems friendly and confident and openhanded, and he explains that he and his companions are archeologists, on a commission to find the tomb of the Dragon That Will Rise Again. Vulcan casually mentions that they have been there, and they agree to take Laszlo and his team there. They are ecstatic, and Laszlo agrees to resupply them in return. Laszlo leaves the twins to guard their supplies and they take their motorcycles, walker, and Laszlo's walker eastwards.

They head out, and head off the road toward where the ruins of the tomb lie. They come over a rise and see a field of humanoid figures moving around in the rust storm. They watch for a while and the figures seem to be moving in strange regular patterns. They decide to get closer and see that the figures are weird biomechanical zombies, who appear to be moving and working in some sort of factory or warehouse, long since rusted away. As they get closer they see the human parts have long since been scoured away, leaving long dead animated zombies. They walk amongst them cautiously but they do not react.

They pass beyond and travel for three days into the wastes, where the storm subsides and they find themselves amongst the huge metal pylons that mark the Tomb of the Dragon that will Rise. They explore for a little bit and Vulcan gasps and pulls Renko's hands back from digging in the wide plain between the pylons - it is a lake of mercury, toxic if ingested. The lake itself is probably worth an an incredible amount, if they had the ability to transport it. It is covered by a thick layer of rusted metal, floating above it.

From the location of the pythons they surmise that the entrance to the tomb is under the lake and they try to work out how they might remove the mercury. Then Vulcan has a brainwave, and utilises all his engineering skill and ingenuity.

He places one porcelain walker at either end of the lake, and strings copper wires between them, and runs a powerful electric current from the power plants of both walkers. It has the desired effect - the mercury parts along the patterns of the magnetic field created, and the rusted metal parts and liquid mercury forms arcs and ridges following the magnetic field, clearing a path to a sealed hatchway at the bottom of the lake.

They hurry down, open the hatch, enter the tomb and close it behind them. They find themselves in a long hallway, lined with coptic jars. Ish opens one and finds it contains small white porcelain ants, which start to come to life - he quickly closes the jar. They check each jar in turn and find semi-awakened mice, rats, birds, cats, snakes and dogs in each jar, in that order. 

At the end of the corridor before a great door are three jars, each of a different colour, with a venn diagram on the floor in the middle of them, with each of three circles in corresponding colours. Lisciac looks inside each vessel - it contains odd liquids and oils alongside various bones, organs and fluids. Vulcan deduces that this means they are supposed to mix the contents of the jars, but they decide as a the group that this is the last thing on Earth they will do.

Behind the door is a funeral chamber - a large sarcophagus with terracotta warriors surrounding it. After testing that the warriors will not come to life (they do not) they open the sarcophagus and see a human sized porcelain figure inside. 

After checking the hatch that the lake is still magnetised, they together haul the jars and treasure up to the surface by the shore of the lake. Sissy manages to drop the jar with the porcelain ants, and while most fall back into the tomb, some escape out into the lake bed.

The stand beside the lake edge, and Vulcan deactivates the magnetic field. As the magnetic field fails, the mercury falls back into the lake, and the metallic fragments and rust splash down, sinking, and then rising to the surface and within a minute completely concealing the mercury lake as the rust and metal floats to the surface. Sissy notices with annoyance a few white ceramic ants escape from the lake onto the shore, and burrow into the earth. Laszlo is extremely satisfied, and declares that the expedition has exceeded his wildest imagination. However, they have a huge amount of loot, and they are unsure how to get it back to civilisation...

The Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 7: Motorcycle Emptiness

They discuss Barush, who demands to be smuggled out of the Serai. They think there is a price on his head, and discuss secretly whether they should turn them in. They defer their decision and allow Barush to stay in their luxury room while they decide what to do. Renko does some market research and spends $100 to learn that his sack of luxury hats is worth $100 in Waystone. The Dreaming King mentions that there is a city there called Alphaville, but they point out to the befuddled king that the city is probably long, long gone.

Barush Velk, revolutionary diesel dwarf, poet, and fugitive.

Meanwhile, Barush is trying to convince them to join the revolution. He is disgusted by the debauched luxury the Porcelain Princes live in and says that with the help of their porcelain walker and large armoury they could, with the help of the Obsidian Gnomes, take the Serai. They're ambivalent, and even more so when they learn they need to go to the Death Facing Passage in order to find the secret revolutionary rebel base. The Dreaming King, meanwhile, is lording it over them, which they patiently put up with. Barush tells them that the King has lost all his memories, since the Princes carelessly stored Memory Worms next to his sarcophagus. 

They decide to go to the Way Stone, and then double back to get to the Death Facing Valley, to spend less time in peril from the Death Face. They send the Walker out of the Serai first, and then Renko opens a portal into his mirror in his hotel room and they exit in the full length mirror they are carrying with them, bringing Barush with them, successfully getting him past the checkpoints.

They hurry west, into a truly desolate wasteland that has no vegetation or water. As they head west, dry hot winds blow up, until they are in the throes of a full dust storm that gets stronger as they travel. Bits of shrapnel and debris are flung around. 

Ish suddenly cries out - a shard of black glass has struck her in her eye, and is stuck in there. She decides to leave it in there - oddly she can still see out of the destroyed eye, but she sees the worst of everyone. She puts an eyepatch over it in order not to be disgusted by the annoying foibles of her travelling companions.

At night, Ish tries to enter the King's memories but is unable to. On the third day, they awake to the constant dust storm to find four of their horses are gone. There are tracks - wheel tracks - and Vulcan sends his Vomish bird up to find the thieves - it sees six motorcycle riders in Mad Max style armour leading the horses to the north, but it is driven back by the storm and is unable to follow them or get close. 

The vome bird reports back - and they decide to go after the thieves. They can't carry all their supplies so they drop five sacks of supplies, marking them with a cairn, and head off the trail. They travel as fast as they can, but see no sign of tracks. Finally they exit the storm, and come into some badlands and see a bright light ahead. They come over to a small oasis, with palm trees and low adobe buildings - like a pueblo - and there are their four horses and six motorcycles. Above the pueblo is a low hill, with a metal bunker embedded in the side of it - where the bright light emits from.

Vulcan sends his bird to explore the bunker - it seems to have mirror lined corridors that shimmer and concentrate the light of the sun into a powerful beam that shoots deep into the hill. The bird manages to escape without being burned.

They head down into the oasis - and the riders are waiting for them at the end of the street, telling them to go no further, with their hands on their bolter rifles. The king and Barush take cover. Vulcan steps forward - and all hell breaks loose. The riders open fire, and Renko takes a bullet to the eye. But they prevail - killing four of the riders and two riders hole up in a hut, desperately shouting to be let free.

Six riders were approaching - the wind began to howl...

The group rescue their horses and take the motorcycles. They retrieve some of their supplies but the riders also seem to have several sacks of Cherenko cherries, which they keep half of and gift half to the locals, who are extremely grateful.

They rest and heal that night - Renko drinks a potion to heal his eye but is angry with himself for being shot. The oasis people are welcoming, and the caravan relaxes - not even caring that the two remaining riders manage to escape their holdup and flee into the night.

They use the cover of the night to explore the bunker. Vulcan goes in the top of the hill - there is a pit that leads all the way down into the earth, with mirrors that seem to direct the sunlight deep into the bowels of the earth. After a while there is a mezzanine lined with mirrors. Vulcan drops a torch down into the pit but it just falls seemingly forever. He stops at the mezzanine and examines the mirrors - he tries to pull one off the wall, when hands shoot out of it, and the mirror comes alive and attacks him!

This is the last he remembers - the red war spirit that is haunting them takes him over. When they finally pull him out of the pit, he is exhausted and has smashed all of the mirrors in the pit, rendering the solar passage useless.

They rest at the oasis - Renko manages to make more dog food for the oasis people using the magical implements, which they give to their giant millipedes they use as pets. Lisciac befriends a millipede which he names 'Millicent'.

Renko trades his fancy silken hats for two weeks accommodation among the oasis people, where they rest and heal. The oasis people kindly preserve the Cherenko cherries for them in jars. Ish again tries to enter the King's dreams, but is only able to enter very mundane dreams...

The Ultraviolet Grasslands Episode 6: The Dreaming King

Renko, once they return from the raid, parties with the 24 hour porcelain princes. He wakes up in a ditch, robbed, with a dead vome. He decides to keep the vome in case it's worth something. Dante hits the gaming tables once again and ends up with a part share in a cherenkov vodka distillery. Meanwhile, they hear of two Limelanders who are talking about selling a Sky Key. They find them in the market, and introduce themselves. The Limelanders are Ish and Lisciac, whose tribe was wiped out by the Violet city cat warlord Ginger. Lisciac is prone to prophetic visions, and mentions one of the world ending in fire and darkness, and the chosen being rescued by the sky people. This vision checks out with Vulcan, who remembers Adolf's similar visions. 

The pair produce the sky key - a very light football sized blue globe that glows slightly. They ask for $200 for it, which the Neo-neanderthals readily agree to, leaving Ish and Lisciac wondering whether they should have pushed for more. It's not obvious how the Sky Key works - but they are glad to have it. Dante and Renko are a bit dubious as to whether this is the genuine article, but they discuss terms under which the Limelanders might buy into the caravan if they prove their worth. 

The Porcelain Citadel

They rest up for a couple of weeks and decide to attempt another raid on the Pleasure Palace.  They take both walkers and Vulcan sits atop one with the Red Globe that shoots laser bolts. They arrive at the Pleasure Palace and once again park out front. Renko has bought a vertical wheelbarrow to help him carry the kitchen implements out. They slip into the house and into the great hall where the pile of silken hats and kitchen implements still sits. They hear howls outside,and smell the sickly sweet smell of the creaturs once again. Vulcan talks to the grasses who confirm they are in great danger. Out of the tall grasses the creatures come - seven or eight of them. They leap into the walkers with the creatures pursuing them. Two of them manage to clamber up on one leg of a walker. Vulcan blasts one with a laser - missing the creature but searing the bodywork of the walker. With combined bolter fire they manage to kill one creature, but the second one climbs up to the rim of the howda and attacks Lisciac. She manages to defend herself and drive it off with a spear, and they outpace the creatures in their walkers and return to the Porcelain Citadel. 

Renko tries to get the magical implements to work but is only able to make dog food. Lisciac tries to buy an apothecary set, but is shaken down for all her possessions in return for it, including her shaman kit and all her possessions. She runs to Vulcan, who threatens the merchants and they begrudgingly return the trade. 

They decide to head onwards - they only need to find two more Sky Keys, and they spent nearly two months at the Porcelain Citadel. They check they have sufficient supplies and head out towards the Last Serai.

They head westward, leaving as soon as the purple haze breaks. At about three days out, the Porcelain Walker they purchased at too good to be true prices suddenly lurches to a halt. They see if the can repair the technology but nobody can deduce what the breakdown is. They decide they can still make it to the Last Serai provided they load their supplies into the remaining walker and everyone other than the driver (Dante) walks.

After a further day west, they overtake three bedraggled and wounded looking figures. They approach cautiously. It appears to be three bodies of Iron-Pot-Six-Body, a Porcelain Prince, who explains they were ambushed by revolutionaries and managed to escape. They offer a reward of $50 each to escort them back to the Serai, which Ish and Lisciac eagerly accept. 

The Serai itself is a series of low, ancient adobe buildings clustered around a low hill centered around a strange and mysterious antenna. Iron-Pot-Six-Body thanks them and pays them, and they enter the Serai, unmolested because of their host. 

Most of the Serai is actually underground, in a series of ancient and luxuriously appointed chambers burrowed deep into the Earth. The place smells of woven carpet and damask spices. The group check into luxurious accommodation, while the Limelanders choose the slum slave quarters. 

As is their usual first business, they ask around after a sky key - and Iron-Pot-Six-Body is able to help them - he has heard of a sky key. There is a man, King Elre the Dreaming, who is said to be in possession of a Sky Key. The group are extremely excited about this and search the Serai for King Elre - finally finding him deep in a storage room stacked among some boxes - he is in hibernation in some sort of cryogenic sarcophagus. Lisciac sees his REM and realises he is dreaming - she tries to use her dreamwalking powers to enter his dreams but she is unable to. They agree she will try again at night, but again she is unsuccessful.

Meanwhile Vulcan tries to make contact with the local revolutionary cell, using his secret handshake. He contacts Vok, the doorman at his accommodation, who invites him to a cell meeting that evening. Vulcan foolishly offers his services to the revolution and Vok mentions that they need someone smuggled out of the Serai into the west. 

Meanwhile Renko and Dante have worked out how to revive King Elre - but they will need 1,000 litres of pure water. They manage,miraculously, to find a merchant who can procure this for them, but at a cost of $1,000. They pay, and begin the revivifaction process. Meanwhile, they purchase four ponies and four heroic steeds, ready to make a swift getaway.

The Dessicated King

The King awakes! He looks more youthful and healthy, but he is very vague and befuddled. He explains he was entrusted to travel this way into the deep future in order to save the chosen ones from the end of the world with one of the sky keys. The group had already searched him so they ask where it is. In response the king thinks, and then does a series of strange, jerky and specific hand and body movements. He repeats many times until he is certain everyone has memorised them, and explains that this, along with the other two, will allow them to travel to the sky. Vulcan is convinced, but of course realises that the blue sphere that Ish and Lisciac sold them is a fraud. They draw guns and there is a tense standoff. The outcome is not really resolved but Vulcan makes clear in no uncertain terms he wants his money back. But he has to dash to his rendezvous. 

Vulcan finds his revolutionary meeting and is presented to Barush Velk, who has a significant price on his head. He is a poet, who wrote a satirical limerick against the Porcelain Princes. His bounty is $2,000. He needs to be taken secretly to safety amongst the Spectrum Satraps...