“Every day the world groaned to turn and we were making our appalling studies of the night.”
A Saurian scientist living in an old Angwat temple (Apuiporo, the temple of the sky), constructing strange experiments late into the night. The temple is filled with artifacts of the ancient Saurian culture. It’s also a giant library, filled with books, audio, and video from all the cultures of the inner road. There’s always something bubbling and sparking in the laboratories of Apuiporo.
Most people see Mahukia as a charlatan. The kind of saurian who knows the language of the road is more likely to view him favorably—but only as a kook. His “translations” can’t be right.
Inspiration
1. Bob Dylan: Desolation Row (Highway 61 Revisited)
Mad scientist in the temple: Mahukia
If Back to the Future’s Doc Brown were a bipedal lizard, he’d be Mahukia. He is the saurian voice of Isaiah, crying in the jungle. Most saurians see him as a charlatan speaking lies and nonsense. Those books could mean anything; he just makes up what he wants. If the townsfolk don’t warn the characters about his mendacity, the gardeners will (assuming they have anyone with them who understands saurian). Mahukia himself speaks the language of the road (Latin) as well as the Angwat tongue and several others.
The mad scientist is a second level classical sorceror (using the “classical sorceror” specialty). He sees what he does not as sorcery, however, but as natural science. Because of this difference in perspective, he’s been able to develop non-standard spells; because of his inability to see beyond science, however, he will never exceed the ability to understand second level spells. Despite that, he’s doing a fine job of stealing fire from the gods for mortalkind to use. Now if he could just convince mortalkind to use it…
The temple is a place of power because of the tablets beneath it. He uses this to perform “experiments” that are in fact rituals. That’s how he makes paper books immune to mildew and age, by making his preservation spell permanent through ritual.
First level spells: discorrosion, farseeing, understand languages.
Second level spells: last sight, preservation
He views these spells through scientific and mathematical logic. Understand languages, for example, involves statistical analysis of the text and correlation with other parts of the text to decipher meaning. It is, however, definitely magic; detect magic will show it as magical.
Discorrosion
Discorrosion removes corrosion from metals and plastics, restoring them to working order if corrosion was the only problem.
| Range: | touch |
| Level: | one |
| Formula: | gestures, ingredients |
| Ingredients: | paste of rendered fat, cycad leaf, and swamp gas |
| Duration: | permanent |
| Casting Time: | 2 minutes |
| Area of Effect: | one item up to half level feet diameter |
| Reaction: | none |
| Schools: | Transmutation |
Preservation
Preservation keeps paper from mildewing, crumbling, and aging for the duration of the spell. (Because he is in a place of power, Mahukia uses ritual to make the spell permanent when he can spare a sacrifice—of course, he doesn’t call it that. It’s all perfectly logical.)
| Range: | touch |
| Level: | two |
| Formula: | gestures, ingredients |
| Ingredients: | paste of venus flytrap secretion, beetle carapace, and weta poison |
| Duration: | level weeks |
| Casting Time: | 5 minutes |
| Area of Effect: | a distinct room or space up to one plus level yards on a side. |
| Reaction: | none |
| Schools: | Transmutation |
Because Mahukia is limited to areas of up to three yards on a side, all of the paper books in the tower are in cramped rooms.
The walls, gardens, and courtyards
Each section of Apuiporo is about six feet higher than its enclosing section. The outer garden is six feet above the surrounding ground. The inner courtyard is six feet above the garden. The central tower’s floor is six feet above the courtyard.
The walls are each 24 feet tall (thus, from the inside they appear 18 feet tall). The central tower is a hundred feet tall (thus, rising 118 feet above the jungle floor). The other towers are 42 feet tall (rising 48 feet, 54 feet, and 60 feet above the jungle floor).
Approaching Apuiporo
Through the ever-present faint sticky mist of the forest, you see a strange tower. Looking almost like natural cavern rocks jutting from the ground, the wide stone structure rises organically out of the earth. Tooth-filled lizard-faces leer from the four sides of each tower that juts above the crumbling stone walls. Behind the towers are more towers.
A single ray of sunshine penetrates the canopy for a moment, shining in a window in a central tower, then disappears.
Wide, arched entranceways gape above you beneath the tower that rises directly above the wall here. Brownish-green mold and vines drape the stone. Windows of all sizes and apparently random distribution are scattered across the wall.
The outer wall and garden
Three wide steps lead up six feet to the archway. You pass into a warm, shaded tunnel. Columned halls lead off right and left, splotched by diffuse light coming in through the holes of the crumbling walls. The air smells ancient and wet.
The hall leads forty feat and opens into a stagnant garden. Within the walls, an algae-covered pool sends a wet heat towards you. The pool is a wide V; you are nestled within the crook of the V. Tough ferns cover the ground near the pool. On each end, a vine-drapped pergola stands empty and contemplates its impending unity with the earth.
Sixty feet ahead of you, another wall encloses the 100-foot-tall central tower. Bare columns rise beyond the wall, each column taller than its predecessor. To your right and left, you see two arched hallways leading into the inner wall.
Two saurians, in what would probably be brightly-colored smocks if any direct light penetrated the canopy, are working in the garden. The larger one says something to the smaller one; you can’t hear what it is, but you hear the response. “Yes, master,” the smaller saurian slurs loudly, and backs up, turning around—and trips over a rake as he does so. The larger saurian, were it human, you would swear it rolls its eyes.
The plants they’re tending are like nothing you’ve seen, even in this strange forest. As the gardener moves in with his spade, the vines twist away from him. Weird yellow trumpet-like flowers bob up and down.
The outer wall is hollow; the inside is an arched hallway that completely circles the garden. There are many places where the wall has broken through to the outside or inside.
The garden is filled with strange experiments; the presence of the tablet of gardening beneath the temple ensures great insights into breeding and cross-breeding. The plants respond to stimuli; they can’t move their roots, but they can move their stems and flowers. Some of the trumpet-like flowers toot. (Unless the tablet of the muses is restored, however, they will not do so musically.) They even talk, though it’s random nonsense. “They wake us in the middle of the night with their muttering,” says Mahukia. “They’re silly,” says Akudaum. “I like listening to them.”
The inner wall and the court of the snake
Three wide steps lead up six feet into the archway. The hall leads twenty feet into a column-choked courtyard. The floor is stone, but scribbled with dark, jagged cracks. Huge pieces of broken stone lie scattered between the mold-covered columns. What light penetrates the canopy drifts furtively among the square, often tilted stone columns rising all around you.
Perhaps thirty feet of courtyard separates this small tower from the great central tower. To your right and left, you see archways leading into the ancient structure.
Images are carved into the columns, symbols that may be language, and drawings depicting trees, lizards, and great snakes.
As you move among the columns, you realize that there’s a dragon writhing among them—a dragon engraved upon the columns in a way that causes it to move as your perspective changes.
There was once a dome covering this interior area. The interior itself was a maze. The dome has fallen in, and much of the stone removed for use elsewhere. What remains lies amid the still-standing columns that once held the dome up.
The columns are from four feet to six feet apart, carved with the ancient language of the Angwat, using cuneiform that is related to the cuneiform of the city. The drawings and writings tell the story of the jungle gods who raised the sky from the ground on columns of wood and finally built the temple to hold up the canopy of the sky.
A great snake winds its way through the forest, a long, thin, dragon with wings and a great head. The dragon writhes as they move among the columns; the flame billows from its gaping mouth. It’s all pure optical illusion. But they can follow the whorls of the flame, and if they do they will find themselves in an other-dimensional tabernacle where the tablets of Enki are stored. If they follow the tail, they’ll find a secret stairs to the web of temples. See Covenant of the Snake later and The Lost City earlier.
Staying at the temple
If they present themselves reasonably well, Mahukia will offer to let them stay at the temple. He will direct Akadaum to show them to suitable apartments. Akadaum will put them on the south side of the temple, so that they’ll be less likely to hear what’s happening on the north side. He’ll also put them about forty feet off the ground, but if they request something else they can have anywhere from twenty to sixty feet off the ground.
If they want more space than one room provides, he will offer them two or three rooms connected by a balcony.
Saurians do not themselves sleep on beds. However, they do—or did, once—have non-saurian visitors. The rooms Akadaum will offer have dinosaur-bone beds with dinosaur-leather “mattresses” and silk sheets.
The walls, gardens, and courtyards: The tower
The corridors of the tower are tiny—three to four feet wide—running up and down throughout the tower, opening onto precipitous balconies, high rooms, and wet, slime-covered dungeons. The lizards, large as they are, seem to pass relatively easily, almost slithering up and down the stairs. Two lizards may not pass, but must use different stairs; since there are so many, this isn’t usually a problem. If it is, then Akadaum gives way to Mahukia.
There are statues of lizards everywhere. There are no altars in the temple: the Angwat use basins; a small handful of statues do have basins in the floor in front of them.
The top of the tower is an empty room between the four large tyrannosaur faces; they can look out over the jungle, and are still eighty feet below the canopy. Archaeopteryx have nested here, and have left bird droppings everywhere.
The inventions of Mahukia
Gardening and language are the specialties of the temple. The botanical gardens of Mahukia are one of the seven wonders of the worlds.
Botanical gardens
Flowers that hide when anyone draws near. Trees that bend to provide easier access to fruit. Vines that act as barrier curtains. Flowers that talk nonsense and toot atonally.
Library of stories
Mahukia’s assistants all become great writers if they don’t become great botanists. They gain a facility with words and wordplay that is unmatched. Their books line the reading room off of the dining hall.
Mahukia’s feast
As any other saurian, Mahukia eats insects. But he also eats singular fruits and gourds prepared by his assistant.
The Library of Apuiporo
The library is a mojo resource of 150 for transmutation magic (they call it alchemy), stone engineering, and the natural science of chemistry. It’s a mojo resource of 40 for magic, engineering, history, and natural science in general. One of the tablets stored beneath the temple is the tablet of languages; anyone within the temple can learn to read any language easily. The library is an unlimited mojo resource of 60 for learning languages. Note that the Angwat don’t speak much of magic; all magic was stolen when the world was formed.
The library is also an Ordered place of power, level 2.
The books in his library span all of the cultures of the inner road, which include several technological levels. Most of the books are in the Angwat tongue and are written in their variation of early pictographic cuneiform. Many of the books are in Latin using Sumerian cuneiform script. Several use the cuneiform script to transcribe local (to the book’s writer) languages. There are Elvish books in both cuneiform and in Elvish script. There are spiral books in Kilirel. Books in Polynesian using cuneiform and using special Polynesian memory-glyphs. Books in Celtic using runic script. Mayan scrolls in Mayan glyphs. Books in Camprye using both cuneiform and the bastardized Elvish of the underground. There are no books in Anglish.
Most of the books are made using leafpaper that is immune to mildew and that lasts nearly forever. Some books are made of paper, and for these he has a special formula and ritual to make them permanently immune to mildew and age. He also has a few suntomes: books that can only be read in a beam of sunlight. He has a special room for reading these books, with a window that occasionally sees a beam of light come through the trees.
Suntomes (wapor): Suntomes are ereaders. They usually contain hundreds of books. Their batteries are long dead; on finding a new suntome, Mahukia has a special ritual for carefully removing the corroded battery, special fluids for cleaning the corrosion. The suntomes are then left for seven days in a cool, dry, place beneath a golden pyramid. At the end of the ritual, the book is brought into the sunlight; if it works it goes into the library. If it doesn’t work, it goes into his laboratory for experimentation.
Suntomes do not work in magical light. They require real sunlight (including divine sunlight). Their solar panels last for five thousand years. Each book is 1,000 plus d10,000 years old. (“Wapor draw their wisdom from the sun.”)
Moontomes (ulior) are like suntomes, but they do not require light. They have special inexhaustible “batteries” that will last twenty thousand years. Each book is 1,000 plus d8,000 years old. (“Ulior do not require sunlight. We believe they draw wisdom from bulankai, the little moon. The moons can penetrate the trees because they are more accustomed to working in the dark.”)
Ghostbooks (bunor) are suntomes or moontomes that vocalize their contents. Most of them speak in a raspy, barely audible, and incomprehensible voice due to degeneration of the speakers. Mahukia has a spell, restore voice, that temporarily makes the voices clear enough to understand.
As the beam of sunlight plays across the tome, strange squiggles worm their way across the cover, twisting and wriggling, and finally forming static shapes. Mahukia slides a finger across the cover and the figures rearrange themselves into new figures. He slides his finger vertically on the cover and the figures move up and down.
Mapbooks (banor) can be either suntomes or moontomes, but most of them are printed.
Library books
Te Pukapuka o Tane (The Tome of Tane): Written in Polynesian on leafpaper, in glyphs resembling the rongorongo texts, this book is an in-depth discussion of the philosophy of the priests of Tane, “the fisherman and master of clay”. It describes life as a series of islands which must be navigated to and from. It contrasts Tane with Tawhiri and the untamed ocean.
The Blanket of Ife Nlah: This ghostbook suntome describes the flooding of the first city, Ife. The people of Ife accepted the beautiful watersnakes to live among them; the watersnakes poisoned the watchmen on the levees, and the city was overrun by a great wave of water. Ife is now Ife Nlah, the city underneath the ocean.
The Throne of Seeing (banbanu): Anyone sitting in this ornate silvery, glassy, crystal chair and placing their palms on the armrests will immediately see a map of the world that they can manipulate by thought alone. The initial vision will be of the Solar Mountains and Prata Phoenix. Between the two there is no jungle, just twenty miles of road. A series of pulsating rings points out where the viewer currently is; it places them near the road between the mountains and Prata Phoenix, about ten miles away from the city.
They can pan north, south, east, and west, as well as out. West is the great cities beyond the Solar Mountains; East is the great tree and the City itself, shining, about 830 miles to the east. North are more cities and dry places on rivers. South are great ports on the ocean. Huge ships ply the seas. Zooming out, the lands seem infinite; the world is flat, and the roads and cities spiral out of the crossroads like the stars in the sky.
Zoom out again, and the world is a tree. The City and the crossroads leading out of it, out to Nequinium on the ocean are the roots leading to the trunk. The ocean winds its way up the trunk and the spiraling cities and roads are the barks leading up; entire worlds live on the leaves of the tree oblivious to their neighbors. The tree is infinite; it rises into the clouds; and the peoples that walk upon it are legion.
The Angwat don’t use chairs; their name for the throne is “big map”.
Anyone who sees the tree will dream of the tree that night. The tree will call out to them; it is not time for autumn.
Covenant of the Snake
Two of the tablets of Enki are lost in the library: the tablet of the garden and the tablet of language (the original language, which infuses all languages). This temple is a place of power because those tablets have been here for thousands of years, and anyone within the temple can read any language because of it. The tablet of musical arts is in the lost city. Aatu’s drum spells and trumpet spells were stolen by Aate to make the world. They were supposed to be returned to Apuiporo, but instead they were stolen by the Immortal Lizard King and kept in the Lost City. This is why there is no music in the jungle. If the tablet of languages is stolen, their language will fragment into dialects, and nearby Kish will no longer speak the language of the City.
The tablets are stored in a simple, inscribed chest marked with the cuneiform for something or other. Within the chest is also an account of the tablets’ discovery, which will include clues as to their original hiding place in the city. It wasn’t originally a hiding place, but neglect has turned it into one, as the people of the city lost their pride of skill and knowledge. The chest is bulk 40, and has slots for three tablets.
“The carven flame becomes real flame, roiling over thin stairs down a passage you did not see before. ”
Following the dragon to the flame is a very easy (+4) perception roll. Once someone is at the flame, they are twisted from normal reality; they cannot hear their companions who are not with them, nor can their companions see or hear them. The only way to reach or exit this area is to follow the flame. If they wish to keep going, they must pass through the fire. Passing through it means passing through the flame. It’s a divine flame that requires faith to pass through; no physical or magical protection can stop it. A willpower roll is required if they want to believe that faith can pass them through unscathed. Otherwise, they take 4d8 points damage from the fire, with 4 of those points being injuries. If they don’t believe, then no willpower roll is necessary; they will take the damage. Testing it first means they don’t believe; at best they’ll be allowed an evasion roll to avoid damage during their test.
Mahukia and the bugs
If you’re going to use the Coriandrome and the Autumnal Swarm, Mahukia knows something about the swarm. One of his books, in a variation of Celtic, includes some text about the insects:
“Who are the insects? October people, I’d guess. Off one of the side roads there was a man who saw the flea circus, must have seen it, for he wrote the truest words about it I’ve ever read. I have it here somewhere. Ah, yes:
Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Night sand flows in their veins; the worm ticks in their heads; the blind burrower sees with their eyes, and they speak the tongue of flies. They are the abyss between the stars. They sift the divine storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. In gusts they beetle-scurry, frenzy forth, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the October people.
They set their clocks by death-watch beetles and thrive the centuries. These creatures want the flaming gas off souls who can’t sleep nights, that fever by day from old crimes. They build death-camps for our dreams.
(That’s a riff off of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.)
Mahukia and the stones
“The tablets are stone according to the people of the road. They scattered to all the swamps of the great jungle. Prophets ascended stormy mountains to bring back the writings of the gods; heroes stole the secrets of the tablets and brought back fire. Kings drew the art of war from tablets of stone.”
Mad scientist in the temple: Akudaum
If you’re using Joe Lakono or some other villainous NPC who can change shapes, that person can be here. Mahukia often takes on assistants from the local villages. Mahukia’s apprentice is often an intelligent bumbler. It’s not a prestigious position. Among the assistant’s responsibilities are working with the ten to twenty saurian gardeners who come from the nearby villages to work in the temple gardens.
Akudaum came to Mahukia “about seven months ago, yes, just seven months ago with the little moon” from outside the cities. This means, however, months in Angwat time, which are about ten days long. Joe came here about seventy days ago. He pretends to not speak the language of the road well: Mahukia has been teaching him since he arrived.
Akudaum is his Igor. He’s a bit bumbling, but he can follow instructions very well and takes well to languages. He can already read the language of the City and the language of the Elves, as well as their own language, and he’s learning to speak them as well. He also has an uncanny ability to know when a lightning bolt will strike during a storm. That’s a very important ability for the sidekick of a mad scientist.
Joe is very much at home in this semi-Austronesian culture. He has used the Mask of Hina to take on the form of Akudaum, an eight-foot-tall Angwat Saurian. To throw off suspicion, he acts the part of a slight bumbler. He’s slightly more competent than Lenny in Of Mice and Men, but that’s the idea he’s trying to project. Basically, he’s a cross between the Igor and Lenny stereotypes (“yes, master… uh… which way did he go?”). Make the impression as light or as over the top as fits the game session.
He collects giant butterflies, but, he says, he can’t stand killing them, so he keeps them alive in a room off of his balcony room, some of them in cages. He feeds them daily. If any of the characters hurt (or eat) one of his butterflies, he won’t do anything about it except shuffle a bit with his head down and say “I don’t like you”. Unless the character that does that is acting evil he will also suspect they’re morally unaligned, which would make them susceptible to Divine Service.
Why is he here?
Joe is looking for the tablets of civilization so that he can return them to Tawake-awahim, the incarnation of Tawhiri in the City. This library probably doesn’t have them, but he needs to be sure; it’s ancient enough, and close enough to the city, that it might be the hiding place of the tablets. He’s looking in every high tower for secret passages (of which there are many) and hidden collections. He is not (yet) aware of the extra-dimensional dragon room reachable through the court of the snake. He is also not aware of the possibility of the Lost City having a tablet.
Akudaum: Protection
If he suspects someone will try to determine his moral code, Joe will use Moral Veneer to mask it. Moral veneer lasts up to 10 hours, since he’s tenth level, although he’s more likely to use a fifth-level or sixth-level spirit to manifest it. He’ll use it during their initial meeting and during their first meal together.
If he needs to protect himself, good bets are manifesting stillness and darkness around any sorcerors or other prophets he’s aware of. He never stays to fight; he will use invisibility to good as soon as he can step out of sight. Obscuring mist can obscure his retreat.
He may also use spiritual hold (2+half level targets in level yards) or command—against fifth-level or lower targets with wisdom and charisma below 13, there is no defense against it. Foul air is useful against level targets, though it doesn’t immobilize them. Icy prison can be used against anyone who needs to be immobilized, as it will also likely distract any friends who want to save the victim from suffocation.
If he has time to set up a trap, he can use divine service against anyone he knows not to have a moral code.
Remember that darkness does not affect the underground vision of the saurians.
Akudaum’s room
He lives in a room on the north side of the temple’s main tower, with an open balcony. He has very few belongings. He keeps the Mask of Hina in his room, but if he’s suspicious of any visitors (such as the player characters) he may start carrying it with him. He doesn’t want to carry it, though, because it’s suspicious: it’s a human mask that reflects Joe’s culture.
He has borrowed several books about City culture, especially about the temple at the aureum, the golden pillar at the center of the world. There are also several books about stolen knowledge (Prometheus, Ishtar, Pandora, Eve), tablets of knowledge (Enki, Moses, Tu), and stones of power (Arthur-like stories of stones and stone tablets granting great warrior prowess). Anyone who can read Polynesian (similar to the rongorongo texts) will be able to tell from Akudaum’s notes that he is trying to find the tablets of Tu (death) to return them to Tawhiri (water) where they belong. The tablets have caused mankind nothing but trouble. Knowledge is evil. Tawhiri’s representative in the city is Tawake-awahim.
Some of the spirit foci an intruder might find in Akudaum’s quarters include masks and hair for moral veneer, sea water (holy water), hemp rope, yew bark, olive branch, gold coins, tokens from the Paradice Lounge, incense, amethyst dust, writing paper, pens, and ink, platinum bracer, diamond dust, and carven torcs (fantastic servant).
He has placed a Cyclone Sigil on his room at level 9. The cyclone will cause 9 points of damage to the victim, and if the victim fails a Fortitude roll, will lift them into the air 30 feet, 10 feet beyond the edge of the tower. The balcony itself is 40 feet up, so they’ll fall seventy feet (this means 4d6 damage, of which 4 are injuries, and it will take 4 seconds to fall; the latter doesn’t matter, it’s just cool). The cyclone sigils are visible to any who can see divine power. Anyone within one yard of the victim must make an Evasion or Fortitude roll or also be taken up by the cyclone.
He also has attached a first level Death Spirit to the room. When anyone enters the room and he isn’t there, it will manifest darkness at the center of the room, with a 16 yard radius. The darkness will last 1 hour and 20 minutes. Because this uses spirit attachment, Joe will know when the spirit triggers, and he will be able to hear everything that’s going on in the area for 10 minutes. He can technically also see, but it’ll be dark; if he’s in human form he won’t be able to see, but if he’s in saurian form he’ll have underground vision.
If he’s been packing for a trip, an astute character might notice that he was packing lightly, but packing both saurian and human food.
Attack of the Butterfly Warriors
“At midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do.”
Inspiration
1. Akira Kurosawa: The Seven Samurai.
Joe will summon the Butterfly Warriors before leaving. Before attacking, they will circle “like moths circling a flame”. Joe lit the flame with a ritual on his balcony. The Cyclone Sigil will remain on the room, and possibly the Death Spirit (darkness), depending on whether or not Joe needs it.
The ritual has a difficulty of 2: there is a penalty of two to the rolls to prepare and perform it. It uses specially-chosen giant butterflies as a sacrifice, laid out in a spiral on the ground, still alive. The candle is in the center of the spiral in a tin holder. He used ritualize to gain a bonus of 5 to the Reason roll to prepare the ritual. This means he has to roll 14 or less to successfully prepare the ritual (+2 for the place of power, +5 for ritualize, -2 for difficulty; failure means a penalty to the performance roll); he has to roll 17 or less to successfully perform it (+2 for the place of power, -2 for difficulty). If he can come up with 8 chanting cultists, he can get a +3 to that latter roll. Perhaps suggesting a celebration of some kind? Or he might attempt to use the garden tablet to turn the talking flowers into chanters. That’s a charisma roll at a penalty of 4, and +4 for having the tablet. He’ll need 15 or less, and a bit of the tail of a dragon, wyvern, or other dragon-kin is needed to make it work. Joe has a bit of wyvern tail, which might be found if the characters search.
To the best of his ability, he will attempt to focus the butterfly warriors attentions on one or two of the player characters.
If the ritual is destroyed (the candle extinguished and the butterflies dispersed), the butterfly warriors will no longer be ritually called to Apuiporo, but they won’t disperse immediately. If they have any idea that some of the tablets of Enki are here, they will fight to the death to retrieve them. Otherwise, they’ll cause trouble for as long as they think it’s worthwhile. The Autumnal Swarm and Joe Lakono are allies of convenience. Both want to unravel the world; the difference is their reasons for it. If the swarm discovers that Joe has the tablets, they’ll happily double-cross him to get the tablets for themselves.
5 Butterfly warriors: Very Rare (Swarm Business); Fantastic; Ordered Evil; Level 7+1; Survival: 33, 49, 54, 26, 46; Defense: 8; Organization: hive/task-oriented; Intelligence: average; Charisma: average; Movement: 20/12; Attacks: scimitar and sting; Damage: d8+2, d10 or d12; special attacks: stasis; special defenses: immunity to sleep and telepathy, flicker; magic resistance: 2; size: medium, large.
On a called sting attack, victims make an Evasion roll or go into a stasis for a number of rounds equal to half the damage done. A victim of stasis is invulnerable for the duration of stasis; they’re literally out of time, able to do nothing and be affected by nothing. They are visible to others, but have no recollection themselves of anything between going into and coming out of stasis.
These butterfly warriors have the forms of lizards (33, 26, d12), humans (49, 46, d10), and mananubi (54, d10).
Attack of the Butterfly Warriors: Timeline
1. Joe will send his two saurian minions with the tablets about 1 AM, as soon as he has the flowers chanting for him. The flowers will momentarily chant loudly; then Joe will quiet them until he starts the ritual. But he wants to give the tablets a head start, so he has to activate the flowers early. Hearing the momentary loudness from the other side of the tower is a perception roll at +2 (however, remember that if they’re sleeping, they also have a penalty).
2. From earlier that evening to 3 AM he will prepare the ritual: he will set up the candles and lay out the spiral of live butterflies on wooden pins.
3. From 3 AM to 4 AM he will perform the ritual to call the butterfly warriors. If he has something important from one or more of the player characters, he will include this in the ritual so that the warriors will target the characters. If he is using chanters, whether flowers or saurians, the noise will be on the north side because Joe has set up the ritual in his apartment in the tower. Hearing them is a standard perception roll (probably at a penalty due to sleeping).
4. At 4 AM, when the ritual is complete, he will leave. He will catch up with the saurians carrying the tablets east at about 10 AM. They will continue on to the customs house and towards the city.
5. The five butterfly warriors arrive from the swarm world at 6:30 AM.
6. Joe will try to keep a high level weather spirit available. If He thinks he’s being followed and has the time, he can stop to call up a couple of miles worth of fog.
Mahukia is already in the garden; he may be attacked. Otherwise (or in addition) if the characters accepted a room with a balcony, some of the warriors will alight on the balcony; others will circle the tower in reserve until fighting starts. Once fighting starts, all warriors will take part. But they will want to avoid being all in the same place until that time, so as to avoid any mass attacks.
They are warriors, and can use combat bonus pools just as warriors can. They will also use group effort if it will give them an advantage.
If they can capture their targets, they will return with them to their hive far south of the jungle in the port of lost ships. The hive contains twenty-eight Autumnal Swarm and seven butterfly warriors (including the five summoned warriors). A swarm hive is an Escher honeycomb.
