Here's an overlong blurb for the game I'm prepped to run when we have time and drinking inclination at GaryCon! It's Jason Sholtis's "Operation Unfathomable" from Knockspell 5 (intro text adapted therefrom), so if you memorized that when it came out, um, drink a lot in the next week!
I'll be using AS&SH, of course. I have ~15 pregenerated characters made using Blackadder23's fantastic "Waifs of the Boreas." He also graciously provided character portraits for them, and they are all printed on Maezar's Character Sheet of Wondrous Automation. It takes a Hyperborean village.
Here's to gaming with as many of you as can make it!
Operation Unfathomable: Hyperborean Remix Version
The Witch-Queen of Yithorium, ultimate and possibly immortal ruler of that ancient city-state and overlord of all the Zakath Desert, has had a rare moment of weakness—waiting too long to kill a lover who had begun to bore her. Now the fabulous Null-rod, an anti-magical artifact of mythic proportions, long kept safely locked away in her tower of alien stone, has been taken by the once-puissant Eyraen the Flaming Horn, who saw the writing on the wall as he began to fall from her favor. Driven mad by despair and frustrated bilogical urges, he stole the Null-rod and took an expedition of his doughty cataphracts, wily scouts, fell magicians, and blood-thirsty clerics of Thaumagorga into Underborea, there to prove he was still a man worth having by destroying the chaos godling Shaggath-Ka, the Worm Sultan. The things we do for love . . .
Only one mad youth returned from the mighty warrior’s doomed expedition. The Witch-Queen’s overseers at the nearby mining town found a rough map of a small section of Underborea in the youth’s tattered pack, along with a small golden idol of the Worm Sultan.
Just yesterday, the local champion attempted to plumb the depths with a sizable force of soldiers.. A half-insane survivor, before rescinding his citizenship; cursing the Witch-Queen, her beauty, and all the gems of the earth; and disappearing into the howling Hyperborean night, reported that the war band attracted so much attention it was drawn in to nonstop battles. The captain and his remaining stalwarts fell in an encounter with a singular horror, which the fear-crazed survivor was unable or unwilling to describe.
The Witch-Queen still demands that the Null-rod be recovered, and her minions tremble in greater than mortal terror at the thought of failing her. The section of the Underworld visited by the Flaming Horn's party may have been at least partially pacified, and so a smaller expedition may have a better chance of success. At any rate, nothing else has worked. You young roughnecks, adventurers, and fanatics, already planning a career in exploration, treasure hunting, and dungeon delving—and unfit for any other work—will simply have to do. As nominal subjects of the Witch-Queen, you are officially compelled into service. You are to proceed stealthily and choose your battles wisely. (This cannot be overemphasized, the Witch-Queen’s man assures you; after all, what could you really defeat?) However, the overseer says, there shall no doubt be a reward beyond mortal reckoning for your efforts: a face-to-face meeting with the Witch-Queen herself, should you survive—that is, succeed. Of course, there may also be the opportunity to reclaim any treasures procured by Eyraen before the Flaming Horn was undone by his frustrated fate. Either way, the Witch-Queen’s overseer is not leaving you a choice. Far better to die in the mad chaos of Underborea than to live to face the Witch-Queen's disappointment . . .
Ghul wrote:
