GÖRGA 1: Grume & The Tricky Bitches
A wolf howls in the cold frigid night above ground; an unusual group has found themselves sat around the same dwindling fire as the true dark of night sets in among the barren trees. 100 yards back lies the yawning portal, the toothless mouth of the beastly land of Görga.
A small statured man with an ass’ face squats on his heels poking a stick into the fire, he hardly notices the massive, scarred hulking frame that's come to warm itself, and the once finery of Cornelius’ shit stained pants. Aside from the three wanderers sits a frail old man, the journey here, or perhaps his sickness has rendered him weak and dying. He sips, with great effort, from a dented tin cup, his only possession in the world.
With a few quick words SmartAss has swindled the dying man out of his last meal, and downed it in front of him. The two strangers look on, Cornelius grinning at the cunning of the swindling. With his dying breath the old man asks that the three simply leave his body across the threshold, so that his corpse may lie at peace in Görga.
Grume, the collection of scarred muscle and tendon, hauls the man’s corpse with ease, heaving it into the dark where the three look on. Somewhere a predator strikes its prey, the distinct snapping of an insect finding its end is barely audible behind the crickets and the wind. Just for a second they almost convinced themselves they glimpsed a single hair of golden filament drifting in the wind towards the corpse. A hard rub of the eyes reveals nothing, just as quickly as they saw, it disappeared.
Finding themselves at one of the great transitions in life, the three, four including Cornelius V, the beloved homunculus/son of Cornelius, begin the descent down the long stairs into the depths, lit only by the dwindling time of a borrowed oil lantern. As the stone stairs give way to the rickety wooden staircase the claustrophobic surroundings give way to a city sized cavern, rising up out the inky darkness below is the shabby Hamlet of Belze.
Belze isn’t pretty; its denizens are strung out, hollowed, and often missing large chunks of flesh… or worse. They all seem to be high or coming down from some kind of opiate like drug. As Grume and the Tricky Bitches enter the small hamlet a thunderstorm begins in the roof of the cavern overhead, inexplicably. Pouring dirty black rain the winds shift as thunderclaps and golden lightning rage overhead.
The hamlet has little to offer, its occupants are either too far gone to know what's happened to them, or the ones supplying the Grime. Among the small shabby lean to’s and huts there are a few communal spaces, an inn and tavern, a once fine building; now derelict, and finally the true oddity of Belze, a two story house standing on stilts at least ten feet high.
By the tavern a bar fight bursts out into the rain, a man in a black leather mask covering his nose and mouth and a tattered leather longcoat throws a right cross into the jaw of a young grime addict, dislocating his jaw and knocking him out in the mud. Tensions are palpable in the onlooking crowd. The man in the mask puts his muddy tricorn hat back on his greasy middle parted shock of hair and unceremoniously bends down to take a small metal box from the folds of the miserable wretch’s shawl. There is no more for the crowd to see, bickering stops, breath is held as he pushes through, heading towards the stilted house.
G+TBs follow suit, curious to see where the man is taking his prize, only to be stopped at the ladder up to the House of Flies. The guard wears a black leather executioner’s hood, eyes and mouth cut out, he demands tribute be presented if the three are to enter the cultural heart of Belze; a diseased and blackened one at that. SmartAss and Cornelius whip up some shit covered meat rations, a cheap trick or even a crude prank at that, but manage to bluff their way through, backed by Grume’s muscle. They attempt to convince the guard his inner monologue wants the meat bad enough, it does nothing. He seems to be satisfied with the tribute and allows the three up into the house of flies proper.
In the wretched and miserable house; one part tenement house for the gang’s members, one half operating HQ/jail a long line of miscreants and would-be adventurers wait for their turn at an audience with ol’ ‘Arry Snakeface, the leader of the House of flies. As the line grumbles on, the three take note of the oddities in the house of flies. Cornelius had already noted the horrifying mutated flies buzzing around, with needle like beaks that open vertically, serrated long cuts into the flesh of their prey, the inside of the house however had even stranger sights for soon to be sore eyes. In a small cell there lay about 40 miserable bodies, all reaching through the bars, groaning and shoving, or giving into the deth the sweet cold wet mud has to offer. Their cell was branded with a simple sign.
THOSE THAT DIDN’T PAY
Opposite the cell they found a series of shelves holding human heads in various states of mutation and decay, each with a matching wooden tag hanging on a hook below it. Grume takes the plaque inscribed 52, below a long haired fine faced head with a wildly broken nose and an eye shifted several inches too low, noting that the head reeked of rancid rose oil.
Finally upon arriving at the front of the line Grume and the Tricky Bitches arrive in ‘Arry Snakeface’s office, a crude room set up by the backdoor of the house. Meeting face to face with him they note his wildly strange and off putting near alien desk, a make of elongated unnatural bones, smithed into fine furniture, vertebrae hold up the smeared glass top, femurs holding the damned desk up.
Snakeface is never without muscle, Choya, a hulking bag headed silent beast stands to his right, Lurk, a wisp of a thing cloaked in an ethereal black cloak, eyes grafted to the back of his hands to his left, a huge pile of black grime powder in front of him on his desk.
As discussions go the three present Snakeface with his tribute, shit smeared meat-ration, inspected first by lurk, chewed, then spit into a foul paste into the floorboards. SmartAss flaps his mule lips, just barely convincing the lord of the house of flies that this is common practice for meat from the surface. He sinks his grime blackened teeth into it and spits a macerated wad back out onto the desk, chasing it with another hit of grime. Despite their strange means, the group has earned their audience.
Snakeface pulls the corresponding contract for head number 52, name: Oleander Pippin, young patriarch of the Pippin noble house in the land above. Whoever has drawn up the contract is willing to pay a hefty sum, just to see Pippin's head restored to undeth. The contract is also a BAMN, a by any means necessary contract, meaning that the group can resort to the practice of life giving; killing to harvest animus, in order to fulfill the contract.
With a nasty blackened grin Snakeface tells them that they have exactly 7 days down to the minute to return with the revived head, or he’ll send after them on the assumption that they’ve gone rogue and intend to fulfill the contract themselves, and will have them sold to the Iron Barons below. Grume shakes on the deal, prompting Snakeface’s grafted weapon, a wrist concealed phallic stinger to draw a single drop of blood, landing on the line of the contract.
The final deed before the group can descend into the true pit of Görga; a simple toll has to be paid to use Snakeface’s stairway down. Two fingers, or a foot. Flesh must be handed over.
SmartAss attempts to sell Snakeface on the premise of a quick HJ instead, which he is entirely too eager to receive, calling the bluff. In one quick swipe of SmartAss’ hooked sword Grume and SmartAss pay the toll in blood. The two guards move aside, revealing the inky blackness and the rickety stairwell that spills into it.
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