Sunday, March 1, 2020

ASE Sketches: Protoceratops Pit Fights & Catfish Cults

Some location/ encounter sketches for Anomalous Subsurface Environment/ Land of 1000 Towers.


Protoceratops Pit Fights
The lazy sorghum farmers of Chelmfordshire have all but abandoned agriculture in favor of protoceratops pit fights. The biggest barn in town has been outfitted with balconies overlooking a dirt pit, hemmed in with thick caging. Gauchos from the Certopsian Plains bring in their most aggressive bull protos to fight against various popular teams of hillbilly shire wrestlers. The wrestlers aren't terribly athletic, but can win a match by holding a dino down for the count or beating it unconscious. The dinos on the other hand, trample, maim and crush the wrestlers more often than not. Usually 4 or 5 matches a night. The farmer's prettiest daughters sell potent sorghum beer to the raucous crowd.

Plot Idea
The Denethix based fight club SPIRAL FRACTURE has caught on to the popularity of these hillbilly dinosaur fights, and has decided to take a closer look to see if they want to invest.  The owner Gus Lights, his sultry wife Blanche la Blanche, and the retired champ Rex Balls are in attendence.  They have brought their masked champion Johnny Karate to battle the dreaded Black Bull. The gauchos are fixing the fight though- even if they don’t know the extent of their involvement. An anonymous person gave them a large pink pill to give to Bull “2 hours before the fight”, for a guaranteed victory. The stranger is an agent for Spiral Fracture's arch rival, the fight club CONCUSSION INC. Secretly, Rex is having an ongoing affair with Blanche. The two of them are conspiring behind Gus' back to take out Karate. After getting a payout from Concussion Inc., they both plan on leaving him.

Black Bull staggers out of the cage, barely able to stand. Its breath is ragged, eyes bloody, and mouth oozing pink foam. It collapses after a few wobbly steps, seconds later its abdomen begins to bubble and fizz- a caustic wound opens up and a glistening pink substance begins to leak out.and coalesce into a long snake-like tentacle. It lashes at Karate. Karate can’t easily escape because the exit door is jammed. Unless prevented, the ooze will dissolve him and slither through the cage attacking the crowd at random. With every victim it killed, it grows in size and gains an additional 1d6 hit points.

Raided Farm & Indutrial Ruins
There is a raided sorghum farm to the north of town. The house is ransacked, farm animals killed and the humans gone. Spattering of blood here and there. Three toed tracks lead out through the sorghum fields to an area of ancient ruins.

North west of Chelmfordshire en route to Mt. Rendon, the merchant road passes through miles of ancient industrial ruins. The shells of dozens of massive concrete buildings, their steel girders twisted and poking out from collapsed piles of rubble, spread out in either direction. Some of the intact walls stand 30 to 50 feet in height, but are only fragments of shattered buildings. Piles of twisted metal, and coils of rusted and fused wire. Sink holes collapse into the earth, revealing flooded sublevels and dangerous catacombs.

There is one building, seemingly more intact than the others- the walls are mostly intact, reinforced with steel mesh and permacrete. It is a goblin egg-hive. A dozen egg sacks are fused to the walls, incubating and poking up beneath piles of dung and soil. Six goblins defend this ruin, all armed with bent short swords.

Giant Catfish Lake
At center of this industrial wreck lies a lake, some 300 feet across. Oil and slime glisten upon it’s still waters. Around the lake’s edge are dozens of crude fetishes made by the goblins. Animal skulls mounted on sharpened sticks with bones clacking in the wind. A few hastily made rafts are pulled up onto shore, the goblins tie their victims onto these and push them out into the lake to feed their master. A gargantuan catfish makes its home within the lake’s toxic depths. It has reached prodigous size and ferocity- attacking and devouring anything that might accidentally make its way into the waters.

A tribe of goblins has sworn obedience to the catfish and worship it like a god. They started sacrificing animals to it, and this satisfied it for a time- but its hunger grew. Using crude telepathy, it demanded manflesh from the goblins. Now the goblins have begun to abduct people to feed to their terrible, hungry, fishy overlord.

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