The Heavy Standard: The Sword of Cats

[Part of the Party Time journal]    

Around a fourth of the 555 opt to remain in the peaceful Painted City, and the remainder are armed with Eastern type armor and weaponry as agreed by the Painted Lady. After passing through the Blue Forest and dodging a few jiang shi (hopping vampires) they come across an obliterated land scape with a mountain in the shape of a cracked egg in the center of a crater in the distance while the remnants of the Waiting magic academy lies in ruins closer to the plateau walls.

They opt to go to the academy and learn it was a good choice, as that mountain is full of hostile aliens that fortunately can't stand the sunlight. Nevertheless a skeleton looking mage-builder (he drank a flawed potion of permanent invisibility) hammering away on a bomb he is building requests they explode the thing, but they refuse - opting instead to simply buy his other wares which include bracers of magnetism (to each other), a variety of potions (that are all just soft drinks), and a sword of cats.

With this they proceed into the endless sandstorm of the Niga desert and happen to wander into the base of the Cult of the Grey, fanatic slavers who worship a tall gray alien who claims to have saved the world by shooting down the egg-mountain and continues to save the world by generating an endless sand storm so that other hostile races don't come visit. He says all of this while using a large metal spear-straw to impale chained captives and drink them like disposable juice canisters, crunching them up and tossing them away when he's done.

The team opt to slay him and his cult, setting the remaining captives free who help lead them to the Nigian city of Babababa which holds a gateway up to the Waiting City plateau. A small encounter with spider cacti lets Juris test out the sword of cats which turns defeated enemies into regular cats! At the city itself the surviving Nigians of the 555 get them past any security and they offer to escort the tithe wagon of amputated female slaves to their great wizard, Feckless Licker, up to his tower in the cursed land. To save the slaves from further pain, Juris stabs them with the sword of cats and turns them all into (full bodied) random cats too and lets them go free.