Chapter 6, Part 2: "The Melted City..."

Additional players in this drama:

BULL'S EYE BUCK McGOVERN - Earth Man Fighting-Man, bears Gan-ron's magic silver needle-sword

CORPORAL RADAR O'REILEY - Teenaged Earth Man, former member of a failed Terran Exploration Mission, has a metal nose
THORAZ AND KALERVO - Cactoid Brothers, Fighting-Men

Part I Here.

Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin have both taken leave of the party in Small Dust in orer to pursue their interests.

Monster Monagin meet's with Small Dust's Sheriff, Vholdhaan a portly Blue (Kerulian) Man, at the Governor's Mansion. Vholdhaan offers to sell him an heirloom Earth Man revolver for 2000 gold credits, which is beyond Monagin's finances. He than offers the weapon at a substantial discount if Monster Momagin slays a small gang of Axebeak-mounted Gnolls that have been harassing prismatic salt harvesters and Monster Monagin agrees to consider the offer and leaves to discuss it with his companions.

The still groggy and hallucinating Dickie Dee visits the local Sorcerer, Havtti the Clicking, a Bronze (Dhazzi) Man of advanced age. He seems distracted and possibly senile, and rambles on about his research into the arthropods of the Prismatic Salt Wastes. He does have several spells that he is willing to let Dickie Dee copy into his spellbook for a suitable fee and also offers to let Dickie Dee copy two spells in exchange for the fresh slain cadaver of a Giant Prismatic Scorpion of the Prismatic Salt Wastes. Dickie Dee takes leave to consider the offer and rejoin his party.

Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin meet up in the marketplace and decide to follow the rest of the party into the Prismatic Wastes. In need of additional fighting-men to bolster their ranks they recruit a pair of Cactoid brothers and a teenaged Earth Man, Corporal Radar O'Riley, the survivor of a failed Earth Man expedition who carries a pump-action shotgun and has a metal nose (a replacement for the one that was chewed off by baboons during his initial expedition to Algol's surface). They also stumble into Bull's Eye Buck McGovern, a former companion of their's who fled with a magic sword when the rest of the party were defeated by the intoxicant vendor and wrestler Mozug. There are no hard feelings and he is also invited to join. Mounts are purchased for the newcomers and the two cactus men quickly cut off the spines on the insides of their thighs and calves so as to not injure their bird steeds.

The party sets off, east up the cliff-road to the Iridium Plateau and than north through the Purple Grasslands into the Prismatic Wastes, the nature-savvy Cactoids being able to follow the hours-old trail of the rest of the party into the wastes.

Once in the twisted colorful rock formations of the Prismatic Wastes the train leads towards a towering stone spire. As the group gets closer it's erupts with the malformed membranous-winged forms of seven mutant pterodactyls who flap and caw towards the party. Radar lets off a blast from his shotgun as the cactoids scramble up onto a rock formation with their halberds. The shotgun blast misses and the party begins a desperate melee with the deformed reptiles.

Although the monsters are imposing, soon the companions are drenched with the cold, oily black blood of the reptiles, their scaly bodies lying broken and hacked on the multi-colored ground.

The adventurer's head over to the spire that the pterodactyls were perched upon and the young Earth Man Radar clambers up the rough stone. Among the filth and bones of the nest are the bodies of four recently-slain men which Radar kicks off of the summit.

Monster and Dickie Dee examine the cadavers. One is the pale, deformed body of Dickie Dee's fellow intoxicant enthusiast, Maggot Mort. Dickie searches the body and take the four remaining packets of intoxicants. Next the bodies are searched for an invaluable artifact of the Ancients, "The Eye of Bestowing Life." The gem-like relic is aimed at Maggot Mort's body and small stud is depressed. Invisible life-giving rays bathe the body of the unhealthy mutant which responds by dissolving into foul black corruption, Maggot Mort's defective DNA responding unfavorably to the life-restoring device.

Next the device if brought to bear upon the torn and half-eaten bodies of Rodan the Scrounger and Rygar the Green Man Sorcerer. Their wounds heal in seconds and the two return from the dead, fully functional their health slightly and permanently depleted by their journey's into the afterlife.

The body of the crested Vlesh-man, "Savage" Pink Pankens is ignored after it is looted, no need to waste the eye's charges upon mercenaries known for less than a day!

After a short rest and discussion the party decides to continue Rodan and Rygar's expedition to The Melted City. A short time later the massive ruins of The Melted City are looming over the party, huge chunks of brightly colored glass that have been melted like candle wax by some terrible ancient catastrophe.

Dickie Dee opines that they should seek out any intact subterranean ruins and the remains of what appears to have been a luxurious palace are searched. Concealed by a heap of jagged glass fragments is a staircase leading down into the earth, and after their now-bloody hands dig out a passage the party descends.

The stairs lead to a passageway of ancient corroded alloy which further leads into a chamber, choked with rubble and ancient machinery. The walls of the room are lined with all sorts of grotesque idols of demons and gods in stone and metal and one of the far corners of the chamber has several metal cases stacked in it.

The two Cactoids are dispatched to investigate the metal chests. As they reach the corner three of the statues stir and approach the party...demonic stone forms with talons, fangs, horns and wings. The demon-statues prevent the cactus men from rejoining the party and a terrible fight breaks out.

Although the party fights vigorously and skillfully, their weapons, aside from Bull's Eye's needle-like silver magic bastard sword, are unable to damage the stony hide of the statue-demons and the situation appears dire as the monsters claw and tear at the party while their weapons bounce and clang off of the demon's unharmed bodies...