Ep. 159 Dusters & Dragons Chapter Three

## Listen

Ep. 159 Dusters & Dragons Chapter Three

—Boy under the creature's influence

The gang lay around the recently derailed train. When they come to their senses, they tie up the remaining member of the Scale Gang and question him about the purple slug. They don't get much of a response, but are directed to a mine not far away.

At the mines they find more glassy-eyed Scale Gang folk, and an arch made of bluestone and a red ore. There's a fey creature with a bulbous head and tentacles inside.

The shooting starts when Milo kicks a rock down into the chamber, and they're noticed. They kill the creature, which causes the mine to collapse. They make it out just in time.

Though they believe they've defeated the creature, as they sit around, recovering from their harrowing adventure, they're watched from afar by a monster eerily similar.

## Synopsis

Everyone lays around the recently derailed train. Leilia sees one of the Scale Gang move next to her and stabs him in the throat with her hairpin. Amid his dying shrieks, a purple slug crawls out of his mouth. Mathias shoots the slug and asks Grum to hex the slugs out of the other men. When he gets near, the slug rears up and launches itself at Grum's face, latching on with its horrible teeth. There's a moment of panic and Glorfin shoots it clean off. Grum pulls the remainder of the slug out of his mouth and takes a shot of whiskey.

Mikki pulls the guy onto the cart and starts questioning him. The guy tells them the last thing he remembers: sitting around a campfire, eating beans, planning on how they were going to steal the coach. In actuality, that was over two months ago. A halfling boy who had recently joined sat with them around the campfire, looking strange, and the guy felt a weird bite on his neck, and then nothing.

They needed owlbears at first, but they weren't right somehow. They needed something more. He points them in the direction of the mine, about a half a mile away. He says *she* needs bluestone. Leilia asks who this "she" is, and tears start rolling down the guy's face, his mouth foams, and he breaks down.

Mikki ties him up, Grum says a prayer for the dead man, and they head into the mines. Leilia puts her hair back up and pulls out her parasol, and Glorfin steals their coin purses.

The two moons rise in the sky as they near the mine. It's guarded by a man with a rifle. Mathias sneaks up on him, and dives for cover when he's noticed. The guard wanders out to investigate, and Mathias shoots him and goes back to the group.

They gather at the entrance. Leilia decides her Derringer will be better for a fight than her parasol, and they enter the mine.

The further down they go, the more retched the smell becomes. They find the carcasses of thirty or forty owlbears, with six-inch holes in their cranium. The brain has been completely removed. They also find fairly fresh corpses of a human, a gnome, and a dwarf, also with their brains removed. Leilia comes up with the brilliant idea that there's some kind of cabal of prospectors and miners intent on taking over the Old World. Mikki thinks maybe they should keep looking.

They get to the main mineshaft, a huge hollowed out area. On the far side is an archway, constructed of bluestone and ore, about 12–15 feet tall. It's been etched with glowing arcane sigil, and it hasn't been completed. There are nine members of the Scale Gang working on it, and standing in the archway is a fey creature with purple skin, a huge, bulbous head, and tentacles. It's wearing a black cloak.

Grum gasps at the unholy sight, and kicks a rock—which goes tumbling down into the chamber. Everyone turns to look at them. The fey creature points and shrieks, and the Scale Gang goes into action.

Mathias shoots at the creature, but loses his footing and goes tumbling down into the chamber, landing on his butt near it. Grum tries a curse on it, but hits Mathias instead and incapacitates him. The creature takes a potion and its wounds heal, and then he unleashes a psychic attack on Grum.

Mathias gets another shot off and kills the creature. The entire mine starts to shake as the magic in the bluestone portal becomes unstable. The Scale Gang grab their heads in agony.

The gang starts hauling out—except for Leilia, who stops to check the bodies. Before she can learn much, Grum drags her out. She manages to snag a medallion that was around the creature's neck. She loses her parasol.

"*Grum, if I wasn't wildly intrigued by you, I'd be mad!*"
—Leilia
The mine collapses, the screams of the Scale Gang wailing out as it crushes them. The gang stop to catch their breath, and Leilia takes a closer look at the medallion. It's made out of a strange mixture of some reddish ore and bluestone, forged into three interlaced circles.

A distance away on a rocky crag, a creature with a bulboud head and tentacles stares down at them. Seeing the medallion in Leilia's hands, it curls its lips and snarls.

End of episode.

## Quotes

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