ic Golden Dead

[Supercape]

GM

 

And so...

 

...Below the deck...

 

Blowfish had taken Beanpole for medical treatment, deep in conversation with the Gas Man, discussing how to Hhhfttt.. Make da deal of da century!

 

The Lost and Forgotten was empty. The thugs, the sailors, the  captain - all hard scarpered, not wishing to contend with explosives and guns. No doubt the police would be there soon. The clock was ticking. 

 

The ship was old. Seaworthy, but old. Chipped paint, broken lights, the smell of oil and brine. But it was afloat. 

 

Down some stairs, through some corridors, and then into the cargo hold. It was dark here - not pitch black, but poor lighting meant it was dim. Not a problem for some super-senses!

 

It smelled of engines, cobwebs, and something rotten. Maybe some banana's - for that was what the cargo crates said. Maybe it was banana's. Maybe it was something more. 

 

It was dark, it was silent, it was slightly chilly. Dust crawled up nostrils. Chimera and Nightscale were alone, with just some ominous looking sealed steel crates for company. 

 

Until the police - or someone else - arrived. 

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

Chimera tilted her head a little as she regarded the younger man.

Basement. Monsters. Creepy mas-!

She snapped her finger.

“Oh ya! I remember that.”

She gave a small shiver.

“Thankfully I have run into that… man(?), again”

Chimera shook her head and looked at him again.

“Nightscale.”

She nodded.

“Chimera.”

She offered her hand.

“Let’s do this quickly. All that noise should have the police responding soon.”

 

*****

 

The Lost and Forgotten was even creepier blow decks. It was dim and not for the first time Chimera wished the symbiote could help with that. Instead, she pulled out her phone and used the flashlight to read some of the crates.

They listed their contents as imported bananas, but the smell hanging in the stale air of the hold suggested otherwise.

 

She wasn’t sure how far into the hold they had walked before she stopped and panned around with her phone’s light.

“I guess we should check at least one crate.”

She glanced at Nightscale.

[Nerdzul]

"Nice to meet you." Luke shook Chimera's hand. "Again." He grinned. 

 

"Yeah... And my bet is, whatever is there, police won't be able to help..." Not that, despite the certain improvement after his years in Claremont, he had much trust in the force anyway. 

 

"I---" Luke sneezed, there definitely was too much dust around here. "Sorry, I mean... perhaps I do have a way to find what we are looking for..." Whatever that was, in truth, he couldn't be certain, but then again, if the ship was so precious that it needed mercenaries to protect or thugs to blow up, the cargo must have been important. "I have a good nose for treasures and the like..." He chuckled and then inhaled deeply, trying to figure out if indeed there was a treasure hidden in the hull of the Lost and Forgotten.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The air smelt of dust and rust. The Lost and Forgotten might well have been literally lost and literally forgotten. It looked like it belonged in the 19th Century, with a bit of bolted on twentieth century to keep it seaworthy. In any case, the cargo hold felt old, the kinfd of old that crept into your bones. 

 

And to Luke, it smelled more than that - amidst the dust was a clear smell. Gold!

 

Not just any gold. It had the smell of old gold. African gold. It was perhaps not the finest purest gold one could get, but it was old - ancient. 

 

And infused with sorcery!

 

The metal crates beckoned - thirty, maybe fourty of them. They could be ripped apart by the heroes, but that would be noisy. Or Luke could locate the crate by his smell, but that might take time...

[Nerdzul]

"Gold." Luke smiled. He was growing accustomed to the scent after all, especially after rescuing a real treasure from Blowfish casino. "Old gold." He sniffed the air again. "A freakin' treasure." He grinned, although magic being there also meant that likely there was some kind of catch, a curse perhaps.

 

"And it's close... I just... Well I need to find the right crate..." He began scanning the air for traces of the scent. "If only it wasn't so dusty..." He lamented as he continued his search. 

 

"Perhaps... We should still see what's in one of the crates at random..." He suggested.

[Supercape]

GM

 

And so, by one crate...

 

Rusty, old, smelling of cobwebs, and yet robust enough that one couldn't see in (or for that matter, out). That was one crate. 

 

It smelled the most strongly of gold, too. Ancient gold, the kind that Aztecs would make idols of, or sorcerers in long lost lands would forge eldritch rings from. Not the modern, dreary gold from which narcisistic businessmen would make towers from, emblazoned with their name in a tawdry attempt to copy the pharoes of old. This was pedigree gold. 

 

The crate opened with a fierce groan of grinding metal, and the puff of stale air that might come from opening a coffin. 

 

Inside, four golden statues!

 

But where they statues?

 

No! They were corpses! 

 

Corpses that had been covered with molten gold that had then set on their burned skin and charred bones!

[Nerdzul]

"What the f-" Luke ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. Plus, the scent of death, ancient one perhaps, certainly was not as enticing as the one of ancient gold.

 

The young man winced, now what was the nickname of the mobster who seemingly owned the ship?

Ah yes... Nothing good can come out of this. 

 

"The cargo is freakin mummies or something?" He wondered as he looked at the statues, raising his fists just in case. Even before becoming a superhero, the boy had seen enough movies not to expect one of those things to step out of the box and go for his brain.

 

"That's sick... Like... they poured molten gold on them or somethin'" Hopefully those guys were already dead. Yep. Definitely.   

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

She couldn’t smell the gold precisely like he could, but the smell of stale death and something metallic definitely hung in the air as the grate cracked open. Chimera managed to swallow back the bile, but she could still taste it in the back of her throat.

 

She nodded at Nightscale’s assessment.

“That does appear to be the look of it.”

She said and stepped closer, tentatively. Carefully she reached out to touch one of the figures.

“They look extremely old. Are these what Max was after?”

Chimera asked herself out loud as she leaned in closer.

[Supercape]

GM

 

Leaning in closer may not have been wise. 

 

The golden dead moved. Slowly, with a grind, just an inch, leaning forward as if about to progress on a march. 

 

A wheeze came from the dead throat, like an old cushion beaten - a puff of dead smoke, made of ash and dust. 

 

And the smell!

 

Was it merely the smell of death, or something with a more nercomantic twist? Whatever it was, the container was filled with the most awful smell, enough to turn even the hardest stomaches inside out. 

 

 

[Nerdzul]

"Damn!" The stench was overwhelming now, especially to his enhanced senses, more than enough to overpower the pleasant (at least for a dragon) aroma of gold. Luke flinched and raised his fists to confront the creature. 

 

"I--" He was about to quip, but suddenly he felt a pang of pain in his stomach. He didn't have time to swear before he was forced to spew the content of his dinner on the ground.

 

In truth, when he could turn his gaze to face the monsters again, it was more embarrassment than fear that was shining in his eyes. Great... Truly super-hero like... He thought as he kept struggling against the foul stench of death.

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

Mere inches from the golden dead Chimera flinched back when it moved. And with its slow movement something else.

 

It exhaled and she could feel the symbiote mask clamp tighter over her nose and mouth. She caught a bare whisper of its smell still and she stepped back fully making a disgusted noise.

 

Her companion seemed to fair worse as the young man lost his lunch on the floor. Chimera pointedly ignored it and kept her attention on the corpse, then realized the possibly. Her attention jumped to the crate beside this one, and the one beside that…

 

This did not bode well…

[Supercape]

GM

 

This time, there was no mistaking it. The four Golden Dead moved. 

 

Slowly, like a grinding engine built a century ago, belching dust and fumes. Everything about the undead was archiac and decomposing, but for the dusty gold that glinted in the dim light. 

 

Uncordinated, glacial, they all went down to one knee, saying not a word, unless you counted the whining of dead air from dead lungs. 

 

Thud! Thud-thud-thud!

 

The ship reverberated with the sound of mighty golden fists against rusted crates. Slow, they may have been, but the Golden Dead had the strength of a tank. Each fist ripped open a mighty dent, and in but a half dozen pounds, they had already torn patched holes to the deck below. 

 

The only deck below. A twenty foot drop to the very bottom of the ship, and if they penetrated the floor of that, the ship would be scuttled!

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

The vessel trembled under her feet with each reverberation of the undead’s assault. The floor under them was already beginning to buckle and tear under the attack.

 

She wasn’t sure when her companion was going to stop being nauseous so she had to take action. She lunged forward and attempted to seize the closest of them. She  had to be careful, they seemed slow, but strong.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Spacefurry

[Nerdzul]

Luke balanced himself against one of the crates, trying to regain control of his stomach and shrug away the disgusting scent of those horrors that was such a pain to his enhanced senses. He threw a glance at Chimera as the shapeshifter tried to tackle one of the creatures. He could not leave her alone to face those things. 

 

When he was finally managed to regain some composure, despite still being unsteady on his feet, the young man sprang into action. There was no way he could stop all creatures at the same time, but perhaps he could slow them down. He crouched so that he could touch the ground and his eyes started glowing as he channeled magic into the vessel, turning as much of the floor as he could into solid gold.

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

Gold! Gold! Everywhere was Gold!

 

The Cargo crate was now gleaming gold! The Golden Dead were gold!

 

Enough Gold present to warp the minds of Midas himself. Enough Gold to distort world economics. 

 

The Golden Dead's fists struck the grinding floor. Gold was considerably softer than steel, even rusted steel. The Gold buckled and deformed under the impact of powerful fists, still threatening to fall apart and drop them all to the bottom of the ship, but for now, it looked more like puckered putty. 

 

The Golden Dead themselves seemed to slow, seem to flow, until one could no longer see where the golden crate and the flowing gold over their skin began or ended. The gold had merged into one. 

 

The undead moved at a glacial place now, as if stuck in the stickiest mud, the new gold merging with the old and flowing over their body. 

 

 

[Nerdzul]

Well at least it did somethin'  

 

Was it good though? The young man wasn't sure.

 

"Well..." He ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. "This got us some time..." He winced turning to face Chimera. Admittedly he kinda expected for the mummies to like became giant after absorbing all the gold or something. 

 

Maybe he could try to bring those things to his lair... then again... the place had literal mountains of coins (plus it was kinda in his head, so having freakin' living dead roam around there wasn't perhaps the smartest plan).

 

"This is freakin' odd..." He continued. "Does... I mean... your 'friend' Blowfish, did he say something about what was gonna be on this damn ship?" He asked, perhaps there was like a magic gizmo that animated those creatures or something. 

 

As he spoke, he studied the mummies, trying his best to figure out if there was something he might have picked up in class that could help dealing with these things, that wasn't just trying to melt them with dragonfire, not exactly practical in an enclosed space.

 

"Hey guys?" He addressed the zombies. "Stop..."

[Spacefurry]

Chimera 

 

The undead was easy enough to grab ahold of, but now what? There were still 3 more, and she couldn’t hold this one forever. If she couldn’t stop them, then she needed to distract them.

 

“He didn’t.”

She shook her head.

“And he is not my friend.”

Chimera decided to try something drastic. Shifting her grip on the golden ghoul she lifts it overhead. 

“I don’t think they will listen to reason.”

 

With a huff, she throws the thing at the other ones like she was trying to topple pins at a carnival.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Golden Dead were moving as slowly as a lazy glacier now, making it hard to notice they were moving at all. 

 

The flesh, anyway. 

 

The gold was another matter. 

 

Beaten but unbroken, and featsing on the newly minted gold created by Nightwing, it started to flow, bubble, warp and deform. It crept up the sides of the container, the new and old gold merging into some fluid mass that started creeping out of the rusty holes of the container. 

 

It was apparent now that the corpses were just dust. The real energy, the real curse, the real necromancy...

 

Was the gold itself!

 

The dead were just vehicles. 

[Nerdzul]

"Yeah me neither... Don't seem like the talky types either." Luke nodded. 

 

"It's that damned gold." He added, clenching his fists. Unfortunately it seemed like he had made things way worse with his spell. 

 

The least he could do though, is try to recall his magic and see if he could at least limit the damages. He let the spell go. And moved away from the group of zombies and toward the stairs leading out of the cargo hold. "Hey..." He shouted.

 

"Do you want more of this." He continued as he used another spell this time to turn a piece of a nearby crate into gold as he tried to attract the attention of the mummies away from breaking the hull of the vessel.

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

Chimera watched in horror as the fragile bodies crumbled into dust, yet the gold continued to shift and move on its own.

 

She backed away from it quickly. She watched at the golden masses slowly flowed and merged, like something kind of old black and white horror movie monster.

 

When Nightscale began to retreat back up the stairs, she realized he was trying to lure it after him.

‘Then what?’

She wondered.

“I hope you have a plan.”

She called after him as she kept her distance.

“I don’t think we want this thing getting any bigger.”

[Supercape]

GM

 

The golden glob got no bigger, having absorbed all available gold, both old and new. It appeared not to fancy rust or dust, or even the relatively solid parts of the container. The broken, fragmented dead, barely holding together, were not to its taste either. 

 

Instead, it started spinning, like a vortex, on the floor. It was hard to make out, at first, in the dimmest of light, but it so happened some superheroes could see in the dark...

 

Ripples. Ripples growing larger to the point of waves, circling, rotating around a central point. Like a whirlpool. 

 

The smell of dust. 

 

The screeching of metal. 

 

The liquid gold was drilling! Ripping into the bowels of the ship. 

 

Whatever cursed magic was on this gold, it seemed intent on destruction! Intent on scuttling the ship!

[Nerdzul]

"Great..." Luke remarked drily, ruffling the hair on the back of his neck, as the blob simply ignored him and went back to crushing the ship. Now more efficiently than before.  Good job Luke... 

 

"I can just make gold, not the other way around..." Which somehow had never struck him as particularly useful anyway, but then again, life always founds a way right? 

 

"We need to contain this...." Yep assuming there was something that could. He scanned the hull of the vessel for anything big enough for the mass of gold to fit in and possibly sufficiently tough as well.

[Supercape]

GM

 

There was plenty to scan. And it was dark - if it were not for the amazing dragon eyes of Nightscale, searching would have been nigh impossible. 

 

There were several dozen crates - mostly rusted - similar to the one the golden dead had been stored in. None smelled strongly of gold, or curses - but it was hard to tell, for the stench was overpowering. Some of the crates were clearly one step away from rust death, so fragile that a sneeze could disintegrate them. And yet some where still reasonably sturdy. 

 

The only other option was some half-forgotten inflatable life rafts. Probably sea worthy, by the looks of them. A but dusty and cobwebbed. But they would need a good puff of air to inflate, and would be easily punctured. 

[Spacefurry]

Chimera

 

Chimera felt useless as she watched the living gold. It ignored Nightscale’s attempts to draw it away.

 

“Containing it would be ideal.”

She agreed as she looked around as well. Gold was normally softer, but this gold seemed more substantial. The half-rusted crates were a waste of time.

Her mind raced. She briefly wondered what the glob would do once in the water, then decided she didn’t want to find out.

 

“What does it want?”

He asked, not actually expecting Nightscale to have an answer.

 

The tingle on her symbiote drew her attention, she wondered stupidly for a moment if the symbiote could ‘eat’ it.

Electronics have gold in them… right.

 

She thought about it for a moment. It hadn’t actually attacked them. Could they try to move them?

 

Chimera took a breath and took a various step forward. Then, another. Carefully she tries to get close to the golden mass in an attempt to reach out and touch it experimentally.

[Supercape]

GM

 

As it happened, the gold could be eaten. It almost wanted to be eaten. It responded to Chimera's touch eagerly, seeping into artificial pores and through artificial skin. 

 

There was plenty of gold to swallow, and once half had been sucked up, Chimera started to experience visions...

 

Visions of graves, of funeral pyres. African warriors and Kings, trading gold with the Europeans, soaked in blood of war and slavery...

 

...Of cheap and shallow graves of the Slaves in the colonies...

 

...of Conquistadors in search of Lemurian gold...

 

...of Swamps and Marshes, ruled by a Hag, a sorcerous Hag casting curses on gold...

 

...of the Dead, burned alived from molten gold...

 

It made little or no sense, and Chimera could feel the fringes of her sanity under assault. But one thing was certain, the gold was cursed, and the dead followed it. 

 

And the other half of the gold continued to drill down to the ocean. Slower, to be sure, but given enough time...

 

What would absorbing all of the gold, all of the curse, cost Chimera?