Massacre at Black Rock
How NOT to do Gaumata's Vision

Gloranthan Folk Tales

Gloranthan Songbook

Moonie Madness

Carmanian Sources

Malkioni Scriptures

When I first read Gaumata's Vision, I knew I had to run it - it was the best scenario for RuneQuest I had read for a long time. Last Sunday I got my chance: our usual group was taking a break from Lismelder Lands while David Hall was in Germany. I got them together with a few old friends of mine, and we headed off for our first experience of Sun County. The game was a first playtest for the new MoonQuest RQ/Pendragon crossover system we've been working on; in honour of the locale, it was rechristened NoonQuest.

The players were a half-file of Sun Dome militia, with no weirdoes or outsiders among them (per "Scheme 1"). Soltei Brightbow (Dan Barker) commanded, as he'd rolled the highest starting age on 2D6+15; his file, "The Oy-Boys" (after Yelmalio's Runes: OY), included Eudoxus the Ill-Favoured (Steve Thomas), Orlanthio the Two-Fingered (Jon Quaife), Yelonidas the Linen-Worker (Chris Gidlow), Euphorbus (Old Uncle Geoff), Solarus Goldenray (Patrick Waterson) and Peltas Longarm (Mike Hagen).

Everything started quietly enough. The players had happily soaked up the "Spartans in the Wild West" characterisation of the Sun Dome Templars, and were all playing Upright Solar Males as best they could -- though, funnily enough, by the end of the game people were suspecting that Eudoxus (STR 18, SIZ 18, APP 5) was a woman in disguise... They also adapted well to the laconic Yelmalion ways, and "Permission to speak, sir!" was a frequent cry through the latter part of the scenario.

Start-up was uneventful (Haloric Glowbrow didn't spot which of his militiamen muttered, "and when I woke up, the sheets were all damp!" after hearing Gaumata's vision). The march across Prax in Fire Season was made more difficult by Soltei's insistence that they wear full armour all the way, to put on a good show if anyone should see them coming. As they travelled, various of the troops asked for implausible applications of pike technique - "What's the drill if we find ourselves facing Gorp, sir?" They arrived at Black Rock and were suitably impressed by Fethal ("He's a real Templar, you know: not just a militia-man like us lot") - they greeted him with the equally-Yelmalion sacred phrase, "YO". Soltei asked if he'd had any trouble from red tentacles, but learned nothing.

At the celebratory feast their first night in Black Rock, Yelonidas found himself reclining next to Thosah Strongspear. Quite deliberately, he said only one thing during the meal: "You ought not to have given us so much to eat. There might be a famine at any time year." He didn't try to find out who the guy was, or why there was a vacant look in his eyes: too busy being dourly moralistic... Scratch one potential source of clues and information.

Euphorbus, meanwhile, was casting his eyes around in search of "an attractive boy with thighs like a young gazelle" (after a while, people convinced him this wasn't really something to wish for in Prax: it might just happen). He hit on Varloz as someone interesting to talk to, but his comradely offers of "private spear lessons" were fobbed off for the nonce (I kept them in mind for possible later use).

The half-file were challenged to a game of Shield Push by the village kids, but cried off - a few hours afterwards, they worried about what would have happened if they'd lost. They didn't worry that the noisy kids were still running and fighting all over the place at midnight, whacking each other with their hurly-sticks, doing nasty things to small animals the next day, etc: they put it down to youthful high spirits, and (if anything) blamed their parents' laxity.

Next day they asked about the name of the Red Toad Falls, and learned that there was a local Wise Woman. "That's a contradiction in terms," said Peltas. Yelonidas said, "Now we know who's at the root of this problem. Someone's been worshipping toads round here, eh? Must be Chaotic. We'll just go and stick her up on a pole, then we can go home again." Eudoxus, who had previously been taught illicit (non-Yelmalion) spirit magics by a Wise Woman in his home village, pointed out that there was probably one to be found in every Sun County village, and that toads weren't necessarily evil. This was when his comrades started to wonder how he knew so much about womens' matters...

So they climbed the Falls (Climb rolls from Pendragon: Soltei went first and rolled a "1" on 1D20 = minimal success. He crawled up the stream-bed on all fours. The rest of the half-file followed in the same fashion, to avoid outdoing their leader. Yelonidas offered everyone lumps of chalk to whiten their badly-soiled linen cuirasses.) At the top they found Penliss' lean-to. They interrogated her but learned nothing - thinking she might be modestly overwhelmed to be confronted by seven strange men, Soltei offered to "interview her more privately," fumbling an APP roll at the same time: he inadvertently leered at her, and once again nothing was learned. Eudoxus firmed everyone's suspicions when he noticed that there was something odd about her hairstyle.

Orlanthio ("I didn't ask my parents to call me that!") was meanwhile looking down on the village (aided by Farsee 6) from the top of Black Rock Bluff. Hedging his intentions a bit, he eventually confessed that he was staring at the womens' bellies to see if he could see any sticks poking out of them - "Well, not staring at them; I'm a married man, after all; I'm just, you know, sort of looking that way from time to time." He couldn't really help noticing that almost everyone he saw was obviously pregnant, and ("although I don't really know much about these matters") though that might be a little odd. He also wondered why the village had so many more women than men in it...

Revelation struck Peltas: the Secret of Black Rock was that the women were demanding - and getting - too much sex from their men. No wonder they were all pregnant all the time, while the men lay around looking drained! Eudoxus came up with a very peculiar suggestion as to what the "filthy sticks" the sex-crazed women wore "sticking out from their bellies" might be: "Now, that's what I call Chaotic!" If nothing else, the Oy-Boys concluded, he must have spied on the hidden Ernaldan rites at some time. Perhaps he was giving away the secret of his masculine disguise...

Back down to the village (except for Yelonidas and Euphorbus, left on watch above and idly speculating about how you became an Ogre - "Probably by eating Ogreberries; did they serve us any Ogreberry Pie last night?"), and Soltei ordered a house-by-house roll-call to find out just how many men and women lived in Black Rock. They went around with Fethal, and couldn't help noticing the number of Visla's they met. Fethal stonewalled - "It's a nice name, isn't it? Don't you know anyone else called 'Soltei'?" - and they made no real progress.

Meanwhile, Solarus had been sent to the Earth Shrine (accompanied by Eudoxus) to read the temple tablets. Eudoxus spoke briefly with Azdala - "She's not very cheerful, is she? Are all the earth priestesses in Sun County like this?" - then speculated about the many forms of Chaos. Solarus was methodically working through the tablets, but it took him the rest of the day to extract any really useful information from them, one cuneiform character at a time. By evening he knew that there had been an earlier Visla, but had discovered nothing else about her. His report brought the second solution to Black Rock's plight - Yelonidas said, "Trouble all started when the Copper Chalice broke. Fix that, no more problems."

Now, Soltei thought, was the time to ask Yelmalio's advice. He went to the village shrine and laid out the paraphernalia for a divination, inhaling incense and staring at the dome until he could see through it to augur from the flights of birds in the Praxian sky beyond. The message he got was that something in Black Rock was very wrong - Lust, Shame, Murder, Death, Sex, all played a part. But Soltei learned nothing more. (His player was by now suspicious that a succubus might be involved, but Dan said he didn't think his character would know anything about succubi. He also volunteered that Soltei was unmarried, a virgin, and very sexually frustrated. I love helpful people like that!).

Armed with this knowledge, Soltei decided to climb back and "ask the Wise Woman a few more questions," which was the cause of much ribaldry once he was gone. He found that she had fled, and returned none the wiser. Two village kids met him at the top of Black Rock Bluff, and he had a pleasant chat with them about rock lizards biting the heads off sheep - he thought they were "cute kids". He decided on a bold plan to lure out the evil of Black Rock: he would use himself as the staked-out goat, as it were, hoping to attract the attentions of whatever predatory sexual fiend lurked in the village. The only flaw in his plan was, he didn't think to tell anyone else what he was doing...

Now the Oy-Boys broke up for the evening. Yelonidas and Peltas went early to bed in Fethal's hut, while Solarus engaged him in conversation outside, hoping to pierce his 'cover' as a Sun Dome Templar. Soltei sat down under the palms, sighing melodramatically and pretending to drink from a wineskin: the troops refrained from comment. Orlanthio went for a walk in the fields; Eudoxus followed him to see what he was up to; Euphorbus followed him in turn. They all lost sight of one another and blundered around aimlessly for a while.

Down by the stream, Soltei made the acquaintance of young Asiya (per GV2+3), accompanying her to the Ernalda Shrine and watching her hand the white-swaddled baby to the black-clad crone without demur. He had followed her back to the hut when he lost his nerve - "What if one of my men was looking!" - and bottled out. Seems the domesticity of the scene had momentarily allayed his suspicions: he went back to the bank and had a real drink...

Solarus talked to Fethal, hoping to notice if he was outstandingly handsome, or had sharp teeth, or red hair - "Yes, I know it's a cliché, but I'm grasping at straws here." Once they'd swapped war stories until midnight, he stopped trying to poke holes in the supposed 'cover story' of life as a Templar (which Fethal knew more about than he did!) and went to bed, joining Yelonidas and Peltas. Eudoxus and Euphorbus returned, looking askance at their presumably drunken and besotted leader by the stream, and likewise dossed down for the night.

Soltei summoned up his courage, and asked if he could see any light from Asiya's hut. He went to look, pulled aside the goatskin drape to see better, then entered with a few lame excuses - "I couldn't sleep" - "I was worried about you" - "Don't you feel lonely all on your own?" He was quickly (and willingly) swept off his feet and into her bed, entering a new, bewildering and very exhausting world of carnal experience.

As Orlanthio was returning through the fields, he overheard two voices talking quietly - kids out long past their bedtime. He used his Catseye and crept closer, catching part of GV5 before he misstepped and alerted them to his presence. They ran for the village, and he followed after: as the older boy (Varloz) made it to the gate, he turned and glared "with a look of inhuman hatred" at Orlanthio (true ogre nature coming out under stress; besides, how was he to know the grown-up could see in the dark?). Orlanthio chased him back into the village, then went to look for him in the headman's hut.

Bursting into the hut, he disturbed the sleep of his comrades (muttered curses and calls of "Shut up and go to bed!"). He pulled aside the hangings, strode into Fethal's bedchamber, and grabbed young Varloz from where he lay pretending to sleep at his father's feet. The child screamed blue murder. Fethal woke with a start, and cried, "What are you doing to my son?" Orlanthio replied, "He's coming outside with me!" Very Yelmic... He dragged the boy outside, kicking and shouting; Fethal wrapped a cloak around himself, grabbed a spear, and followed. By now, the other militiamen were starting to stir.

Outside, Fethal stabbed at Orlanthio, who tried to parry with Varloz (putting the father somewhat off his stride!). But he had to drop the child when he was viciously bitten - Orlanthio is now known as the Two-Fingered, on account of his permanent, involuntary left-handed gesture of defiance. Fethal attacked again, as Varloz scampered away, and Orlanthio found himself fighting for his life against an enraged veteran opponent. Things were looking black for him, when Solarus emerged from the hut, strode up behind Fethal, and stabbed him from behind with a spear in the kidneys. Fethal dropped and lay groaning on the dirt. Orlanthio turned, caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, and rushed to the gate in hot pursuit of Varloz - he thought (an untimely Scan fumble).

Nobody else had any idea of what was going on. Peltas rushed around the village searching for Soltei - he thought he heard his leader crying, "I'm coming," but might have been mistaken. Euphorbus examined Fethal's wound, alarmed at the prospect of inadvertently killing the headman in some futile squabble - as he saw how many fresh injuries covered his body, he asked Solarus, "How many times did you stab him?" Fethal, now in a more stable condition, was besieged with questions; unable to brush them off, he gasped out "The Big Lie". Consternation!

Yelonidas said, "Right. That's it. We're clearing this place out," and started going from house to house, waking the villagers and ordering them to assemble by the stream, prepared for a day's march. Eudoxus did likewise on the far side of the village. No real resistance was offered, but there was clearly some difficulty involved in the operation. The other soldiers began to aid them, herding the villagers together.

Peltas heard his leader's voice again, and burst in on Soltei and - no, it was just Soltei, alone in a sweat-soaked bed and obviously caught committing a flagrant sin against Yelmalio (must be: after all, it makes you go blind). "Come quickly, something terrible is going on!" he cried. Soltei groaned: "I know. They're tainted. They're all tainted. And now, I'm tainted too!" Wrapping a stained sheet around him, he stepped out into the night. He and Peltas made their way quickly towards the Ernalda Shrine - after all, Soltei reasoned, if his fears were true then the aged Azdala would be the only one in the village free from contamination.

The evacuation started to go wrong when one of the soldiers, faced with recalcitrant villagers, decided to smoke them out. In Prax, at the height of Fire Season. The hut burst into flames, and on the far side of the village Eudoxus saw what had happened and thought new orders must have been given. He, too, torched the nearest hut. Flames leapt high into the night; the villagers began to protest; the soldiers nearest them levelled their spears in self-defence...

As Soltei and Peltas approached the low entrance to her shrine, the crone emerged, cradling in her arms Asiya's dead infant (would you honestly trust your child to that woman?). The file-leader asked what they could do to lift the Curse of Black Rock. Azdala sighed, and said, "Death. Death comes to us all. We must all die, in the end. It is the only way." (She had said exactly the same - more or less - to Eudoxus that afternoon, but Soltei didn't know that). Taking her words at face value, he slashed her throat with his knife, crying, "Kill them all!"

And so, in an orderly fashion at first, the Massacre at Black Rock began. The Oy-Boys guarding the villagers thrust at the most threatening, slaying them easily (all those low CON's). Soltei and Peltas still stood apart, watching what happened. "What did you mean, you're tainted too?" asked Peltas. Soltei screamed: "Yes! It's true! You must kill me too, right now!" Peltas loyally drove his spear through his leader's heart. Without their commander, there was no hope of restraining the troops...

The next day, the militiamen noticed that there were rather fewer dead children than they had expected to find. They couldn't track them, though, as Orlanthio had torched the fields during the night ("in case that little runt is hiding out there"). Yelonidas had slaughtered all the sheep and goats ("breeding stock for the broos, else"). Peltas built a rather small, smoky, slow-burning pyre for Soltei's funerary rites - most of the good fuel had gone up in smoke in the burning of Black Rock. Eudoxus and Euphorbus dragged the corpses of the villagers together into a mound, realised there was no hope of burning or burying them, and left them for the birds under the hot Praxian sun. Solarus sat with his head in his hands, making the third Yelmalio-Rune invocation of the game: "Why, oh why, oh why..." (Y - O - Y... geddit?). Then, assembling into column two abreast, in their blood-stained, soot-blackened linen cuirasses, the half-file of Oy-Boys marched leaderless back to Queenscliff.