[DL] Ball of gold

[Evil Robot Shane From Another Dimension <wishkah@redbrick.dcu.ie>]

 This message contains spoilers to stuff about how the world works, and a
 few different adventures, so player types, sorry, but go away.  :>)

















 Okay, having finished the adventure The Mission from the back of Fire &
 Brimstone, and recovered the large ball of gold from the guy's decayed
 remains (not before one of the characters developed a phobia of gold,
 although that was when Wickliffe picked a bit of gold out of his stomach
 for use as a magical projectile), my posse decided to hit the Santa Fe Trail
 to get up to Dodge (where I'd located some senior Disciples of Obedience
 who were offering 200 dollars for the return of their Prophet, or equivalent)
 and from there to Denver, where they figured they could sell the gold to
 Mr. Webb of Webb Mining, from the All That Shimmers adventure (I think I
 took that off Pinnacle's site) which they'd completed months before.

 Anyway, since Kung Lao, the Chinese martial artist, had taken that round in
 the head, he'd been being posessed by an evil martial artist every day I
 roll a 1 on a D4.  He's under instructions to try to create mischief and
 fear for the rest of the posse (who don't really know why every so often,
 Kung Lao starts speaking better, knowing how to read English, and using a
 three-section staff), so one day on the trail, on his watch at night, he
 took the ball of gold out of the bag, put it on the ground, and drew a
 pentagram around it.  The rest of the posse started getting worried about
 the latent evil in this ball of gold.

 So worried, in fact, that they start talking about it, a lot.  They even
 talked about it out-of-character when we were out drinking one night (in
 Real Life, like), so I figured that this ball of gold had generated enough
 fear for the Reckoners to throw a little attention its way.  So it started
 giving them Night Terrors, and what they didn't seem to spot was that when
 they dreamed about the gold rolling out, a pentagram scratching itself into
 the dust around it and so forth, things it did were things they'd actually
 speculated on it doing during idle conversation.  When they dreamed about
 something trying to get out of it, they split it into four the next day to
 see if anything was in there.  There wasn't, of course.  A few nights later,
 they dreamed about it being in one piece again, and when they checked it,
 it was indeed.  They decided to split up, two fast riders to go ahead with
 the gold and the other two to carry on with the baby (that being the baby
 from the adventure Ticked Off).  So, the two guys who go on ahead continue
 having nightmares til they get on the Black River to Denver and offload it
 on Webb (not mentioning anything about it, of course), and the other two
 stop having nightmares.  They did encounter a Wall Crawler in a canyon,
 though, which damn near killed them until Kung Lao rammed his sword into
 a spot that Caleb had softened up with his buffalo rifle - Kung Lao doing
 this very nimbly whilst carrying the baby in his other arm.  John Woo would
 approve.

 Anyway, that's that... currently I have to deal with a posse that's half in
 Dodge and half in Denver... has anybody else done anything like this with a
 perfectly mundane item that causes fear to the point where it actually
 becomes a Bad Thing?

 Wishkah

-- 
       -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
       | This is pointless and will only promote in-jokes and cliquism.|
       -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sillicon: 6th, 7th and 8th of April 2001.
  http://sillicon.redbrick.dcu.ie/