Chapter 7, Part 1: "The Curse of Gan-Ron's Sword..."

This Episode's Cast:

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
DICKIE DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer and indulgent intoxicant enthusiast
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Fightin' Sailor
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green-skinned Scavenger and Fighting-Man
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
THORAZ AND KALERVO - Cactoid Brothers, Fighting-Men

Part II Here.

Desperately battling gargoyles beneath the Melted City, the party finds their weapons ineffective aside from Bull's Eye's magic silver sword. Monster Monagin is brought down by the stony talons and fangs of one of the rock-demons and lies bleeding and unconscious on the floor.

Ignoring the still-unfired laser pistol holstered on his belt, Rodan the Scrounger pulls out a techno-magical artifact of the Ancients, "The Eye of Retarding Destiny", and aims it at the foes. Two of the three gargoyles begin moving slowly, at one-third their normal speed. This doesn't stop one of the monsters from disemboweling Bull's Eye Buck, an act of retaliation for the injuries inflicted by his magic needle-sword.

As Rodan scrambles through Buck's steaming entrails, scrabbling for the magic sword, another of their foes tears into Kalervo the Cactoid, leaving several sap-spurting deep wounds in his green flesh.

Rygarr the Green Man Sorcerer draws forth one of his trophies, "The Eye of Being an Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes" and turns the tables on their invulnerable foes by rendering Rodan and the two Cactoids impervious to their claws and teeth.

With three members of the party temporarily invulnerable, the companions manage a semi-orderly retreat leaving the bloody dying bodies of Monster Monagin and Bull's Eye Buck to their fates. Using the invulnerable fighting-men to hold the corridor they pull back to the stairs and rush up them into the Melted City where they desperately run through the ruins for several minutes before concealing themselves in a narrow crevice, their wounds filthy and ragged.

The party hears no sign of the gargoyle and presumes that they have escaped. However they realize that during their mad dash through the ruins the Bone Man Sorcerer Dickie Dee was separated from the party and lost. Was he caught and slain by the Gargoyles? Is he lost and wandering The Melted City or The Prismatic Wastes seeking his companions? Some opine that the intoxicant enthusiast deliberately separated his person from the party in order to find a secure location in which to consume the four packets of intoxicants that he took from Maggot Mort's corpse.

The exhausted party decides to rest for the night in their cramped, filthy hiding hole. During the night one of them hears the sound of several men traveling through the darkness outside their hideout but the party remains undiscovered.

The next morning when they drag themselves out of their miserable hole there is no sign of the Gargoyles or Dickie Dee. Returning to where they secured their Ornith bird-steeds they only find bloody feathers, splintered bones and scraps of flesh, the handiwork of the Gargoyles or some other denizen of the Prismatic Waste.

The battered and depleted companions decide to make for the safety of civilization and begin trekking westwards through the Prismatic Wastes towards the mining town of Pit.

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...

Chapter 6, Part 1: "A Shiny New Raygun..."

Participants in the following Entertainment:

DICKIE DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer and indulgent intoxicant enthusiast
MAGGOT MORT - Sickly Mutant Thief, shares the same habits as Dickie Dee
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Fightin' Sailor
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green-skinned Scavenger and Fighting-Man
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
"SAVAGE" PINK PANKENS - Crested Vlesh Fighting-Man

Part II Here.

...A vast sprawl of the melted stumps of massive ancient buildings surrounded by a lumpy yet level plane of cracked glass. The city that once stood here appears to have been built once of vividly colored glass; as the melted remnants are brightly colored violet, red, indigo, dark green and other shades. However, some sages say the terrible weapons that created the Prismatic Wastes also colored the ruins of the people they destroyed. Over the eons many of the ruins have shattered, leaving jagged blades and piles of colorful fragmented glass sand lying in corners and dunes about the city. Some say that the subterranean regions of The Melted City survived the devastation that destroyed it, that there are many tunnels and chambers beneath it where Ancient relics could be salvaged...

The party returns from the failed assassination attempt upon a Prismatic Salt Harvester of the Iridescent Salt Lake to the caravan town of Small Dust. Rodan the Scrounger notices suspicious glances from some of the locals. Dickie Dee and Maggot Mort immediately head to the marketplace and buy out an intoxicant distributor's supply of Eibon Matter and Ocher Lotus Nectar before getting a room in an inn.

Rodan the Scrounger and Monster Monagin both talk to weapons merchants seeking guns; Rodan places an order with a broker for a laser pistol of the Ancients, which will arrive the next day. Both of the fighting-men return to the Inn where the two degenerate intoxicant addicts of the party pay them a small fee to keep guard during their prolonged indulgences.

The next day Rodan the Scrounger collects his new weapon, a sleek silvery laser pistol from the Age of the Ancients. The broker explains that although its radiation crystal holds a charge he is unable to discern how many shots are left before offering a custom-crafted holster and belt for 25 gold credits. The Scrounger buys the holster and after trying out a few weapon stowing configurations with his sword, bow, new laser pistol, and knives decides to wear the raygun on the belt butt-first next to his left kidney where his cloak will conceal it.

Monster Monagin talks with the weapons broker who informs him that the local sheriff has an heirloom Earth Man revolver for sale, however the sum is beyond the Earth Man sailor's current resources; although an offer is made to meet with an agent of the Sheriff in order to see if an alternative arrangement can be made. Monster Monagin leaves the party to make the negotiation.

The party meets over a meal and discusses their next course of action. Maggot Mort and Dickie Dee are jittery and groggy from their chemical exertions of the previous night and appear to have not slept. Dickie Dee announces his intentions to purchase new sorcerous incantations and leaves in order to visit the local Sorcerer.

Over a map of the Iridium Plateau Region inquires are made to the learned members of the party regarding The Melted City (in the Prismatic Wastes upon the Iridium Plateau eastward and above Small Dust). As tales tell of finds of treasures and artefacts of The Ancients in the The Melted City, the four decide to make an excursion to the ruins; and the party, being bereft of Dickie Dee, Monster Monagin or any other of their companions recruit a green-skinned Vlesh-Man mercenary, with a crested-head, from the bazaar before setting out on orinth-back east upon the road leading up the Iridium Escarpment to the plateau above.

Soon they are leading their bird-steeds out of the sharp Purple Grasslands of the southwestern Iridium Plateau into the brilliantly lurid and twisted topaz and violet, crimson and green rock formations of the Prismatic Wastelands where they are set upon by a flock of seven leprous mutant pterosaurs, twisted in form and bearing bloated fungoid tumors. The winged reptiles make short work of the party and drag the bodies back to their nest. There, upon a malformed spire of multicolored stone, the beasts began to peck and gnaw upon the bloody corpses, the shiny new laser pistol still in its holster, unfired.