Solo Mork Borg - 2

I have returned with another few sessions of solo Mork Borg. Things are starting to get a little weird, and I have a feeling they are about to get a whole lot weirder. I should note that my tenses are fucked up in these journals, and I'm too lazy to fix them right now - the goal is to eventually have all the writing be in the present tense. It makes things feel off-putting, and makes the narrator seem unreliable and a little crazy, which is what I'm going for. He seems a bit too lucid in these posts, but I'll fix that eventually.

So far I've been using Mork Borg, Feretory, Solitary Defilement, and some tarot cards, but I've recently got my hands on a PDF copy of Mythic Bastionland, and I could not be more excited. The tables and characters in that book are going to be excellent for what I'm doing. I've been digging around and looking at a lot of weird fantasy source books, and we'll see where this whole thing takes me. You may or may not have heard that my wife and I are expecting a baby in the next few months, and I think this solo RPG and an exploration of my own inner-world is going to be an important way for me to express my creativity over the next year - I don't expect to get out very often to game, so I want to keep the spark alive. Anyway, thanks for showing up and enjoy the next few sessions of the journey.

 

Day 4

A soft drizzle coats the world. It seeps into the seams of my clothing and sleeping roll. Life is a damp and rotten thing in this land. I leave the town called Pyre behind and carry on through mouldering fields, where crops grow and die sporadically, and even more acres lay fallow. The road is paved here, for a reason I do not understand. Who would have such great need of visiting this dead land? Later in the morning I pass by two kingsguard wearing tattered golden tabards with a black rose emblazoned upon their frontage. One was but a boy, and the other an ancient and gnarled man. We spoke naught but nodded gravely to each other in passing. Ratzen wagged his tail but did not approach them. We left behind the coast traveling southward, but not the rain. The crops gave way to stony fields and the road came to a hard fork. I looked both ways, but no great force called me to either. Ratzen sat down on the sodden ground, and I joined him for an indeterminably long time. We sat next to the road in mud slicked grass without sleeping through the night, and when day came, the sun rose above the left-hand path, so that we took.

 

Day 5

A piercing wind rose with the sun and pierced my damp rags, stinging and stabbing at me. Cold comfort is a shirt of chain on a wet and windy day. My body still shakes uncontrollably from some violence that was committed upon me in a previous life. I feel it inside, like a scar upon my bones. My mood has been blacker since embarking on this road, and I have found little and less to laugh about since leaving Pyre. But misery is poor company. Ratzen wags his stubby tail and scampers on, and so I follow his lead.

Around midday a black procession begins growing in the distance. It grows and it grows and it grows, until there are near a hundred people on the road before us. At their center, a large black box lined with black velvet, the length of four men. In it, a giant, dead, its hands clasped together over its heart. I step aside from the road as they near and bow my head to pay respects for the mighty being. The crowd is somber and dressed as such, but in all the variances humanity has to offer. Peasants, knights and soldiers, merchants, clergy, guttersnipes, and even a few of the refined nobility. They clink and clatter along the road unspeaking. This giant must have been a figure of some great renown.

Where they are going, I cannot guess at first glance. I keep my revery until they have passed me by, and I raise my eyes to see a lone straggler bringing up the rear. A woman in mourning black, with a tarnished crown upon her brow. She is old like the crone, and obviously in great pain as she follows behind the procession at some length. She sneers and spits and curses as she follows the train. When I raise my head, she catches my eye. “They go to bury my husband” she exclaims, “and they leave me behind”. She huffs and puffs between ragged breaths, “it’s too late now. I’ll never catch up, and they wouldn’t have me anyhow”. Her sneer cracks and the hurt and sadness behind it show through. She pulls the tarnished crown from her head and turns it back and forth in her hands, wringing it. “I was a queen. In a great castle. My husband was a great lord and revered throughout the land. And now I will return to nothing”. Without my noticing, Ratzen crosses the distance to the woman and begins nuzzling against her. A brief smile breaks on her face before the mask of sneer returns.

The woman and I break bread (salt cured rat, to be more accurate) by the side of the road and we talk of many things. Her late husband, the giant king, long gone down the road. As we prepare to depart, she asks where I am heading. I tell her I am on a quest for the queen of the woods and that I search a body mutilated by those who loved it. She thinks deeply on this and nods to herself. I am sure she senses the wisdom and beauty in such a task. “My name is Bruml, and I will come with you” she says, “at least you look like you walk slow”. And so, we set off together down the road.

 

Day 6

Bruml, Ratzen, and I must have looked an odd group of companions, limping our way along the deteriorating dirt path. Slowly our path climbed, and with the change in altitude brought a deep and dark forest of pines. We traveled up switchback trails and over fallen trees with great difficulty, stopping to rest our weary bones many times. Our path brought us to a clearing atop the highest hill for miles around. In the center of the clearing was a great ziggurat of glossy black stone. We came upon it late at night and the full moon shone across the clearing, reflecting off the polished surface. To us, it looked like a great mirror in the night. The light was a riot of white against the total blackness beyond.

At the mouth of the temple – for so I had assumed it must be, following the directions given to me by the oracle of Pyre – two torches blazed on either side of the entrance, and a set of stairs descended down into the bowels of the great hill. I knew this must be the temple of the Pelerines of the Oneiric Death, and the place where I would find the goal of my quest – but the nature of this order was a mystery to me. Bruml was wary of descending into the inky black below, but the trees around us spoke to me in their hollow wavering voices, they urged me forward to meet my doom, such as it were. Bruml was afraid to wait outside the temple alone, and so, eventually followed Ratzen down behind me.

The first room we encountered was initially deceptive in nature. A green pool of algae sat in a slick stone grotto, and the far wall was a façade that could be walked around at length. In front of the pool sat a figure garbed all in tattered black robes, save for the head. A skeletal grimace stared out of the fuligin black hood, but I could tell that the being was asleep. We both paused when we saw it, for fear that it would see us with an eyeless gaze and raise an alarm. As we stood there in silence, we witnessed the most miraculous thing – we saw, pouring from the jaws of the skull out into the aether, the raw stuff of dreams. The silvered milky fluid spread into the air above the figure and wove a beautiful tapestry of fear and wonder. I saw my future and past, and the end of the world in fire, blood, and ash. Without warning, Bruml hefted a stone and smashed the skull to pieces. The stuff of dreams dissipated into nothingness, and the creature’s mass vanished from within the robes, leaving an empty pile of cloth on the ground in front of the pool. “Let’s hurry on and be done with this” she said, hurrying towards the false wall.

This new room was dimmer than the last and so took our eyes a moment to adjust to the low light. There were more of the hooded skeletal things here – many more. They all sat cross-legged on the floor around an iron post which was mortared into the floor. Hanging from the post were the remains of some poor being. Mutilated they surely were, with arms and legs wrapped behind them and around the post, broken and contorted. This was to be my prize. They were pinned in place with iron rods and chains, and a sword hilt was protruding from the mouth – it had obviously been shoved down the gullet with force, breaking jaw, throat and ribs. But despite this, the corpse was obviously greatly revered. It was decorated lavishly with rings of flowers, jewels, polished stones, and gold. And as we watched, that most miraculous miracle began again. This time, from the tortured corpse – the silvery liquid of dreams poured lazily from the mutilated mouth of this oneiric being, and in unison the hooded skeletal figures opened their mouths and leaned back their heads like chicks in the nest. The fluid flowed through the air like molasses suspended in the aether, eventually forking and arriving at each figure in turn, nourishing them. The skeletal beings shuddered in ecstasy and reverence as they received this strange and divine gift. I knelt down and opened my mouth in mimicry in the hopes that I too would receive the sacrament of this blessing, but Bruml spoiled the moment by smashing another skull with her devilishly effective rock. Some of the nearby skeletons turned to her and began to rise. I could see that if they all rose up, there would be too many for us to handle – and old woman, a cripple, and a dog. I made a heedless decision and began to hobble forward to the mangled corpse displayed at the center of the room. Most of the creatures were still entranced, and so I covered the distance before they could resist me.

I raised my sword and said the black words of the great sin and felt the power of the queen of the woods coursing through my feeble arms. I smashed down with all my might and the magical energies within me struck against the consecrated chains – shattering them to the cold stone below. As the corpse fell into my arms, it gasped as if taking the first breath after a thousand years under water. I turned in time to see a crowd of skeletons rushing towards me. In the distance I saw a mob of the things thrashing Bruml with their bony fists. As the totemic corpse finished exhaling that ancient breath, the cultists crumbled into dust, their robes scattered to the floor. They were no more than the remnant of a dream.

Bruml was bloody, but lucid. I thanked her for her quick wit and helped her to her feet. The corpse was quite light in my arms, and we staggered out of that bleak temple together. Upon cresting the threshold, I saw Ratzen carried a bone in his teeth. An excellent souvenir of our first adventure together.