The Gaming Den

Boche scrambles up to the ledge and goes through the pockets of one of the corpses. ‘I don’t like robbing the dead, but there might be some food,’ he mutters.

If you have ROGUERY, turn to 328. If not but you have PARADOXING (and a psionic focus) turn to 370. If you have neither, turn to 306.

Boche is not only interested in food. While he extracts a parcel of rations from the corpse’s pocket, his other hand adroitly filches a money token out of its wallet. He slips this into his boot without telling you. A casual observer would never have noticed it. Not to be outdone, you deftly remove the token while Boche is checking another of the bodies.

Touching it to your own money token, you transfer the sum of 60 scads (add this to the total on your Character Sheet) and then replace the token before Boche is any the wiser.

If you have PARADOXING and a psionic focus, turn to 370. Otherwise, turn to 306.

No thoughts remain in the dead minds of these unfortunates. No irdinary psychic could glean anything from them now, but with your special talent you might be able to reconstruct the last thing they saw. Touching your fingers to the icy brow of the nearest corpse, you mentally strain to gather the last frozen wisps of memory from the lifeless brain inside the skull.....

The next thing you know, Boche is shaking you by the arm. You feel as though you've just woken from a long drowsy torpor in which your dreams were dominated by a glowing golden eye. 'You went into a trance,' Boche tells you. 'It was like you were hypnotized.'

You gaze into the dead man's eyes, sightless under their cataracts of frost. What was the last thing he saw before dying? The glowing eye - or was that just your own hallucination?

Boche shudders as he looks along the row of dead white faces. There are at least ten corpses here in the pass, some on this ledge and others perched further along among the rocks. ‘They must have climbed up onto the ledge to get away from wolves,’ says Boche.

He’s wrong. There are no wolves up here in the mountains. And these people were not cowering from predators when they died. In every case they are frozen in postures that suggest curiosity: poised peering out from the ledge, lines of amazement stamped on their faces, icicles across their wide eyes. Death did not surround them with slavering jaws, but stole up softly like a thief in the night.

The sky is fading from grey to black. If you press on now, you will have to spend the night in open country, unprotected from the bitter wind. If you choose to do that, turn to 285. If you shelter here in the pass, turn to 349.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:We don't have the Survival to defend against the open country's wind, but we might have whatever skill defends against whatever nonsense is in the pass. Stay put.

Finding another ledge where there are no corpses, you sweep it clear of snow and settle down for the night. Boche casts a wry gaze along the rock face. ‘A bit like sleeping in a graveyard,’ he remarks.

You can only shrug. ‘Try not to think about it. At least here we’re out of the wind.’

‘And safe from predators.’

‘Are we?’ You wonder.

As the feeble daylight gives way to night, snow comes in fast flurries on the wind coursing through the pass. The sound is like a banshee’s wailing. Huddled in your jacket, you try to get to sleep. Then you hear the unmistakable tread of footsteps in the snow. Someone is coming.

If you have ESP (and a psionic focus) turn to 392. If not but you have LORE, turn to 413.

If neither, you can leap out and attack or wait where you are.

The figure emerges from the darkness like a ghost. It is wrapped in a rough cape of stitched furs, its shriveled frame sprouting a spindly neck which supports a large soft head like a leather bag. Pushing back its hood, it reveals a hideous face dominated by a single glowing eye on a flexible stalk.

Boche scrambles to the side of the ledge and then freezes, mesmerized by the creature's eye. The stalk swivels, turning the lethal gaze towards you. If you have AGILITY, turn to 112. Otherwise it is too late to act, and you are plunged into a hypnotic trance from which you will never recover.

With only a split second left before the creature's gaze paralyzes you, you act on raw instinct. Leaping high into the air, you somersault over its head, twisting so as to land directly behind it. The eyestalk sweeps frantically, trying to see where you went. But before the creature can bring its ghastly scrutiny to bear, you give it a hard blow across the back of the head. As it falls senseless in the snow, Boche recovers from the hypnotic trance. even so, it is several seconds before he has recovered his wits enough to speak.

‘Is it dead?’ says Boche.

You snap an icicle from under the ledge and drive it deep into the grotesque pulpy head. The creature gives a single spasm and lies still.

‘It is now.’

You roll the body over to inspect it and are almost overcome by a wave of nausea. It is the most loathsome thing you have ever seen: a thin malformed body with a bloated mauve-pink head. The only facial feature is a long thick stalk ending in the cyclopean eye, now thankfully dimmed by the glaze of death. The scalp is covered with tiny orifices like gaping eyelids. Are they breathing holes? Sensory organs? There is no way to tell.

Boche joins you beside the body. ‘It’s a mutant.’

You nod. ‘That’s for sure, but a mutant what?’

If you follow the creature’s tracks back to its lair before the snow covers them, turn to 134. If you wait where you are until dawn, turn to 310.

The creature’s lair proves to be a cave at the end of the pass. Inside you find a fire of smouldering peat. Around it are strewn bones from humans and large animals. It seems that the creature trapped its prey by hypnosis, leaving the victim to die of exposure.

Whenever it needed fresh meat, it had only to fetch in one of the frozen bodies along the pass – a gruesomely effective procedure. The aftermath of the Paradox War has left the world with many such weird mutations.

Boche gives an involuntary cry of disgust, which he immediately disguises with a nervous laugh. He has discovered a clutch of the creature’s young: blobby heads like diseased potatoes, bodies as shrivelled as a bag of giblets, the mesmeric eye no more than a yellow pebble on the end of an embryonic tuber-like stalk.

‘Cute little devils.’

If you want to kill them, turn to 156. If not, turn to 178.

Strewn amid the mortal remains of the gorgon’s victims, you discover a number of items: an ID card, a battery unit for a barysal gun (good for six charges), a working flashlight, and a set of polarized goggles.

Boche holds up the goggles and jokes, ‘I don’t suppose our one-eyed chum had much use for these, eh?’ He insists on an equal division of the spoils, but gives you first choice. Add two of the items to your list of possessions.

You spend a reasonably comfortable night in the cave and head on your way in the morning. Turn to 199.