More than Nothing: The Goat Getters

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Ug (Juris), Rou (Rose), Ma (Mom) and Jerg (DL) are young cavemen out to prove themselves on their first unsupervised goat hunt, armed only with their wits and fists. It's a ritual of the "Goat Getter" tribe (PC named) that has followed this massive herd of goats over the years. 

Having tracked their prey to the foothills of the Black Mountain, Ug accidentally spooks the goats which sends them running. A sabertooth cat takes advantage of this, killing one goat and running off. Somehow the team loses track of the herd but finds the cat tracks and not willing to return empty handed follow them to a lone tree beneath which is the goat carcass.

The sabertooth strikes from hiding, mauling Jerg but Ma kills it by bashing it with a rock and saving him. They take both dead animals back their nomadic camp but on the way find a group of weeping, dark skinned mountain folk who have been brutalized and or killed by something. The hunters decide to go past quietly.

Back at base, tribe leader Mama Yapa is happy with their performance, beating even the veteran hunters who returned bruised, scratched and empty handed. Over dinner under a pitch black night lit only by two stars, Ug overhears the veteran group boasting about their exploits against the mountain tribe.

The next day the four are off hunting again but this time Rou spots a child seemingly made of light high atop a cliff. They go to investigate and the celestial child, "Sunny" asks for their aid in rescuing an ally from his enemy who will not expect the intruders to be more than nothing, and in exchange will lend them his power if they are successful. They agree and are instructed to leap off the cliff onto an invisible bridge. Ug goes first and sure enough he doesn't fall, so the party follows the bridge directly to a tear in the sky, leading to a realm of dark and freezing cold - a large, chained wolf imprisoned beyond icy stalagmites.

They work quickly to free the creature (taking cold damage over time) when a voice commands them to stop. It is the darkness, and it doesn't want Sunny to gain more power than he already has so instead offers to give them a weapon to kill the child instead. Ug tricks the darkness into gifting him obsidian blade (an ever sharp rock) with a false promise of slaying Sunny. They free the wolf, who turns out to be Luna, and exit just in time.

As a reward, Sunny teaches them how to summon his light: to stare directly at the sun and yell "I am bright!". The pair then vanish and since night is fast approaching the young hunters return to base, noticing there is now a moon in the sky. The peace is interrupted in the village when a giant "centipede" made of a mass of congealed corpses arrives and starts killing their tribesmen, by folding them in half and putting their heads in their asses. 

Ug distracts it while Jerg locates the puppeteer mountain tribe caster on a nearby hill, using a dead baby as a hand puppet to control the creature. Jerg kills him with a large stone then tears the baby corpse in two, destroying the monstrous centipede.

Mama Yapa decides to move the survivors off the cursed mountain to pursue the goat herd into the misty forest beyond.