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| The Khorne-carved butte |
I love doing a one-shot with a twist or reveal to it, but to make that work I think you also have to deliver on the premise you presented at the outset too. I promised barbarians vs. dinosaur action, which they got, and then there was a "the fantasy stuff is actually sci fi" and "actually you're facing an AI wargame corrupted by the chaos god Khorne" layer over that.
The Characters
Aldric, an agile warrior
Bru, a brutal warrior
Chika Boom-Boom, a lorekeeper
Abendego, a hunter
Yrsa, a shaman's acolyte
The Premise
This is what the players knew going into the game:
You are youngbloods of the Rokatehm tribe, hunters and gatherers who eke out an existence in your tribal lands. Your people collect fruit from the jungle and kill the mighty thunder lizards who roam the Carnage Zone for their meat and skins. The Carnage Zone lies beyond a line of magical pillars that keep the thunder lizards from wandering into your tribe’s territory.
The Rokatehm do not live in peace; your people suffer raids from the lizard-headed Eaters, who attempt to drag members of your tribe away to be devoured or enslaved. No one knows where the Eaters hail from–they cross the Carnage Zone to reach your village. Even your great god Makeen does not offer an explanation for the predatory Eaters.
Makeen speaks! Mostly to Gorvus Feld, your tribe’s head shaman, and only when he wears his sacred headdress. Only Gorvus Feld can hear the voice of Makeen–or so you had been led to believe.
One night, drunk on the fermented nectar of the katal-katal fruit, you youngbloods sneaked into the head shaman’s chamber ritual chamber and took turns placing the holy helmet upon your heads. Each of you has heard the voice of Makeen! Makeen has spoken to you!
You were caught during your act of transgression and dragged before the tribal council. No one cared when you claimed that Gorvus Feld had lied about Makeen’s willingness to speak to others. The chieftain sentenced you to exile–you now stand before the mystical pillars, the tribe’s warriors at your back ready to force you from your home and into–the Carnage Zone!
Events
Play began with the characters' gear being tossed beyond the shimmering protective barrier of the pillars. The character crossed into exile willingly, except for Yrsa who had to be thrown past the boundary by the tribe's warriors. The group began to pick their way into the Carnage Zone. Around them, the jungle was alive with the sounds of birds and buzzing insects; as they marched the heat sapped their strength and they were soaked in sweat.
Things went from bad to worse when a few members of the group detected the ground shaking in response to a massive thunder lizard bearing down on them and crashing through the trees. The group ran for it, with most of the party heading left and Aldric heading right in hopes that the monster would pursue the larger group.
Everyone emerged from the jungle at the same time at the base of a butte. The butte had been carved to resemble some kind of helmet or ritual headdress of unknown origins. The maw of the helmet was actually an entrance to a cave within the butte. The characters rushed inside. From the safety of the cave, they could see that the thunder lizard that had chased them through the jungle was a T. Rex. Fortunately, the cave's mouth was too small for the thunder lizard to squeeze in, though its saliva-dripping jaws did snap and snarl at the entrance.
Inside the cave, Abendego tripped over a skeleton whose remaining clothes marked them as a previous exile from the Rokatehm tribe. Using bits of the skeleton and its rags, he was able to fashion a makeshift torch to explore the rest of the cavern. There was a slopping passage up and a strange, unnatural shaft. The shaft was "decorated" with small blue lights and "vines" of copper metal that were threaded with strands and clumps of throbbing meat. When cut, the meat bled.
With no way to ascent the shaft, the group ventured up the sloping path and wandered further into the interior of the butte. They found themselves in a chamber lined with large glass tubes (though they had no conception of what glass was) filled with murky liquid. They had a bit of a jump scare when they realized that fetal thunder lizards were floating inside the murky liquid. Atop each of the tubes were more of the copper vines and bits of pulsating meat. A metal door with no handle marked one exit from the chamber and a corridor stretching off to the side marked another. There was also a perfectly round hole in the floor of this chamber. Using his torch, Abendego could see a collection of human and thunder lizard bones done below, as well as rats scurrying to and fro.
Their exploration was halted when five of the tubes opened to disgorge fully formed (and hungry) velociraptors. The group attempted to flee down the unknown corridor, but it ended in another featureless metal door. Now they were penned in with no choice but to fight their way past the velociraptors. Axes and swords were swung, arrows were unleased, and Chika was nearly shredded by the teeth of a raptor. The group managed to slay the prehistoric beasts. Bru was particularly effective at carving a swath through the monsters.
Abendego was able to fashion a rope from the copper vines (cables, really) and descend into the bone pit, where he found a slim card that unlocked the doors in the area above. As they explored further, they found a shrine with a bronze statue with the same helm as was carved on the butte's face. Piled around the statue's feet were human skulls that were spattered with dried blood. When Aldric began smashing the skulls, it alerted the lizard-headed Eaters in the next room to their presence in the complex. The Eaters rushed in and again the party found themselves in a life and death struggle.
The Eaters were hardy foes, but once they were vanquished the group found themselves in possession of another card. This one unlocked the most horrifying chamber yet: a room filled with wheezing machinery, curtains of raw meat hung like skirt steak, and undulating organs of alien purpose. Within the room were more Eaters (one of whom was armed with a strange sword whose edge was lined with metal "teeth," yeah, it was a chainsword) and a number of dead-eyed beings who looked like Rokatehm exiles whose flesh had been combined with bits of metal and flashing lights.
The voice of Makeen rang out as they stepped into the chamber: "Calculating winner, please stand by." The winner was announced, and it was Chika! Part of the unnerving black metal machinery opened, revealing a throne. Chika was told to sit herself upon the throne and receive her "prize," but she refused. Her refusal confused the Eaters in the room, as they could not imagine rejecting the chance to be transformed into a champion of "the Blood God."
The group heard a sound like the shrieking of a great bird coming from atop the butte. Further conversation with the gobsmacked Eaters was rendered impossible by a woman coming down the stairs from the top of the butte who opened fire on the Eaters with a miraculous weapon. Her white hair was cut in a bob and she wore black armor the likes of which the group had never seen before. (Yes, Sister Talisa was an Adepta Sororitas.) Since she didn't know what to do with the group, she brought them up top where her leader, Inquisitor Mohandas Corrado was busy examining Makeen's "brain."
Mohandas Corrado was a dark-skinned man with a swoop of curly hair covering one eye. He explained that just about everything the group knew about their lives was a distortion of the truth. The Rokatehm tribe were the descendants of the Boom-Boom Rocket Team, a team of suborbital racers who competed across the sector until their ship got caught in a Warp Storm and deposited on the jungle planet. One of the Rocket Team members was a "naughty boy" who had a xenos artificial intelligence wargame system onboard the ship; when it passed through the Warp Storm it was infested with Khorne's demonic energies. That xenos device was, of course, Makeen (machine!) and had been breeding dinosaurs and creating Eaters to carry on the blood-soaked wargame in real time to feed blood and souls to the Chaos god Khorne!
Mohandas asked the group what they would do with Makeen, if they were in his position: would they destroy it or take it away for further study? They hemmed and hawed over this question, but ultimately indicated that they would study it further if that meant putting an end to similar incursions elsewhere. Mohandas agreed and, intrigued by the groups' ability to survive against the machinations of Chaos, offered to take them with him on his gunship so they could be trained as part of his Inquisitorial retinue.
They agreed that leaving the planet was a capital idea, so they boarded Corrado's gunship and prepared themselves to encounter an entire galaxy beyond their wildest imaginings.
