09/22/367 We Gain New Companions

Nov 17, 2016Apoc-Abantey, Apoc-Abantey 3

Abantey Dates: 9/22 – 9/23/367 A.L.

Search the ruins of Ash’s Tower for magics, they said. It will be easy, they said. I guess it’s as easy as anything else now that the Creators have fallen. Gathering our equipment and traveling up the road to the tower was easy. It’s when we got there that things got rough.

We arrived at the melted ruins of Ash’s Tower and in the massive Tabur Hybrid Zone wall midmorning to the remains of a great battle. The landscape was dotted with the rotting bodies of ARA Special Forces agents and hundreds of putrid, rotting carcasses of grotesque hybrids, some small and some as large as houses.

We decided to set up a base at the inn and stable compound just south of the Tower. The front was ruined from the battle, so  we made our way to the inner courtyard, hoping it would give us easier access to the inn. Easy access … not quite, the courtyard was nearly filled with the rotting cadaver of some great beast.

crab-battleWe figured we’d just work our way around it to the inn and stable doors. We didn’t count on the mass of giant scavenger aberrant – once hybrids, now free of amethyst – crabs feeding on the carcass! The battle was touch and go for a bit. Tekla, surrounded by four of the horrific beasts, retreated into the stable, and we thought she was lost. To our, and her own, surprise, once she stood her ground, her true skill with her ax was revealed and she made quick work of the creatures.

I was, frankly, overmatched, and tried to get to the safety of the inn door, and got cut off from the rest. I would have died if not for the sudden appearance of our two newest comrades: Anu, who fell out of Amethyst, and Thunderella, who was sleeping inside the inn, and the concerted efforts of the rest of my squad.

After the battle, and a few tense moments as Anu and Thunderella introduced themselves, we retreated into the inn to clean up, mend our wounds, and prepare ourselves for the task of exploring the Tower and wall.

Anu explained that he had been working with the Tower during the second coming of the OverFiend – providing us with intelligence about the layout of Tower. He was in the hills chasing some escaped hybrid swine when the apocalypse struck. Ripped from the real world and catapulted into the chaos of Amethyst, he wandered for what seemed like days, lost. He heard something calling, a voice, maybe two voices, and he struggled to make his way closer. Suddenly, he felt a presence and was pushed back into real space – to fall into our battle, two months after he was lost.

Thunderella was also here at the beginning of the Apocalypse. She, however, was on a dirigible taking supplies to the Silver Sun. Her tale was a long one (see Apoc-Abantey 2, Back Story, after the meeting with Os’Wa’la). But she left her colleagues when they returned to Raphael, only two weeks after the Star Fall, overwhelmed by the catastrophe. She spent the next two months wandering the Tabur area, wallowing in grief at the loss of her Taushung teachers and her Silver Sun companions.

And now, we hope for a good night’s rest to prepare for the Tower.

-B. Thomas