Challenger Volume III, No.10

Sheryl A. Knowles - Paper & Pixels

Challenger Campaign

040520 Volume III, Episode 10: The Ankh

[There were 0 EPs awarded, 32 total(a);
0 EPs, 23 total(b);
0 EPs, 8 total(c).
There were 0 SPs awarded, N+9 total(a); 0 SPs, N+5 total(b); 0 SPs, N total(c) .]

Norgay Farm, near Lhasa, Tibet.
Cousin Norgay said that he'd heard of the carving of an ankh above the Valley of Life where there was a river and town between Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in the far west. It was dedicated to an Old One, a woman with lots of arms. Such a trip would be long, but it could be made before winter set in.
Po: "Is there a dog associated with the ankh?"
Ramsey: "Of a sort, yes. Anubis, the dark jackal-headed judge of the underworld. Ancient Egyptians -- with the exception of the reign of Akhenaten who sponsored the monotheistic worship of the solar deity Aten -- held a planter-religion. Such mythologies involve the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. There's even an Orpheus analogy where the goddess Isis recovers and revives Osiris (who nonetheless becomes ruler of the Underworld) after he had been killed by Set." The archaeologist continued, "The ankh is sometimes equated to a sheaf of wheat, meaning rebirth."
Norgay: "Wheat does not grow in Tibet." [Not sure it was Norgay, I think it was the GM. :) ]
Penrington: "Where did you first get your story of an ankh in Tibet?"
Ramsey: "I mentioned it a few days ago. At the first inn we stayed in when we reach Lhasa - before we found the Norgay farm - the innkeeper wore an ankh on a chain around his neck. He knew it to be a symbol of life."

Penrington suggested visiting both Chomolungma and Annapurna before trying one of the two passes south of Lhasa or before Annapurna. It was noted that a party could reach Chomolungma or Annapurna before winter, but it was not possible that the weather would hold such that one could reach both. Either route started by traveling south from Lhasa to the Brahmaputra River, then riding west along the river. After a couple of weeks one could head cross-country south towards Chomolungma, a trip that would take 3-4 weeks of mountain crossings. Norgay would guide until reaching a place near the great mountain where guides who actually knew Chomolungma could be hired. He thought. Or one could continue along the river another couple of weeks before going cross-country across the ridges towards Annapurna. Chomolungma was closer to Lhasa than Annapurna but, in many ways, more difficult to reach.

Po: "It is still summer. How long are winters in Tibet?"
Norgay: "It is often safe to travel in October, at least the early part of the month, and to start again in April or May."
Penrington: "Is there a reason to choose Chomolungma over Annapurna?"
Sunshine: "There is the mountain connection. The Lady Mountain in Burma gave us a gift for Chomolungma."
Voronika: "However, it looked like the pregnant Davis will come to term in a couple of months. What better place for FitzCardiff to assume the baby's body than in a place associated with rebirth?"
Sunshine: "FitzCardiff was able to reach to Burma and to Chengdu from beyond Chomolungma. Annapurna is beyond Chomolungma - as is much of the rest of our world."
Po: "Did it also not seem that, at Chengdu, FitzCardiff wanted to take Mr. Steele's body? Is it not possible that the necromancer does not wish to be in the body of a helpless infant?" The boy's comment went seemingly unheard.

Voronika: "What cities are near the ankh in the Valley of Life?"
Norgay: "There are encampments where once there were Old Kingdoms. The first city from Brahmaputra towards Annapurna is called Mustang."
Penrington: "Maybe at Mustang we'll all get flying horses!"

Near Lhasa, the Party purchased horses and winter gear, using almost all their remaining funds. Tibetan ponies did not use saddles such as an Anglish horseman would recognize. Instead, two boards were placed on the pony's back as though it was a sawhorse. Then gear was piled upon that and a rider made himself comfortable, insomuch as was possible, upon the swaying pile. As usual, no mount could be found that would take Steele's weight, and he was forced to walk. He started the trip feeling slightly sluggish. [-2 recovery]

Two days later the steel man was experiencing the mechanical equivalent of panting [-3 recovery] as the Party forged its way up higher slopes. There were brief chilling rains, hard and wind-whipped. The cold did nothing to improve the machine's performance.

The Brahmaputra River Valley was shady. The land was continually rising and the climate, cooling. Mr. Steele found increasing difficulty in keeping his operations smooth as the altitude increased.

A week after the last town outpost had been left behind, the Party came upon a group of Tubal - "high people" - nomads who had pitched their geds (yurts) not far from the river. The Anglish people decided to stop and visit. There was a great chorus of barking. Tibetan mastiffs, shaggy and fierce, were held from the Party by leashes and children. [The mastiffs were the size of the horses...but given the size of the Tibetan ponies, that isn't as impressive as it sounds.] The Tubal were Mongolian in appearance.
Norgay: "They will hunt and fish here for a few days."

The party decided to have Norgay offer a block of tea to the campers. The hospitable tribesmen in return offered the travelers dried yak meat and the tea boiled in yak milk. Indicating Steele, the headman asked, "Is that a White Man?"
Voronika: "Yes."
Headman to Steele: "Gam po dakar Po" which Norgay translated as "Great White Man."
The Mongol explained that a Po was an Old One with a Dragon Staff who sometimes appeared as a great shaggy monkey. Penrington encouraged him to tell the tall tale of a meeting with a Po with glowing red eyes who guided the Mongol out of the snow and gifted him with a fine robe which he had, of course, then donated to the temple in Ulan Bator where lives the Bogdgegen, the representative of the Gesar Buddha, the ruler of all Mongolia. It is a place of many temples and was a long journey to the north.
Headman: "The Bogdgegen is one of Buddha's incarnations. He is very wise. His " - which Norgay translated as "dog you can tie up" - "can tell right from wrong. Stone birds, 12 feet tall, guard his palace. I saw it all not more than three years ago."

For a moment Sister Sunshine thought that perhaps the group should seek the Prayer Wheel dog piece in Ulan Bator but, as the Headman spoke, it became clear that that was too great a trip to be considered.

The Mongols taught a few of the Party the Game of Shatar. The key piece was the Khan; the next piece, the dog; and the pieces on either side of those two were the camels. The game was very like chess. The camel pieces inspired Penrington to swap camel tales with the Headman who volunteered the legend of how the camel was almost the 12th month of the year.
"When the Ongghot named the months of the year, the first 12 creatures who came by him were to become the spirit of the months. However, after the 11th creature had passed, the mouse and the camel arrived together. The Ongghot decreed that the first of the two who reported the arrival of dawn the next morning would become the 12th month. The camel, being wise, stood upon a high hill and watched the East. The mouse, having no wisdom to guide him, sat on the hump of the camel and looked west. As it happened, when the tips of the western mountains glowed with the dawn's approach, the mouse skittered off and reported to the Ongghot. The camel, having awaited the first glimpse of the sun itself, was late. However, each month has come to be identified with a part of the camel. The mouse is the camel's ears, the tiger is the camel's nose, and so forth."

Continuing the discussion of game pieces, Penrington inquired as to legends of the Khan. The Headman assured him, "The Great Khan will return from his travels into the Land of the Dead and will lead all Mongols. He will come through one of his descendants of whom there must be many."
Penrington: "When will this happen?"
Headman: "Ask your White Man."
Penrington: "Who else knows such things."
Headman: "There are still the women who perform ceremonies that pre-date religion. The Women in White will address the gods and the powers of the world. They can be found with the primitives, in holes in the ground perhaps."

The Anglish people camped near the Tubal for the night (albeit the druidess was emphatic in reminding the bemused men in her party that they were not to "share", that she wanted no part in "sharing"). During the 2nd watch, there was a barking of dogs. The next morning, the Mongols explained the disturbance as having been a visit by a great white man with red eyes, and lightning bolts flashing from his hands. He had seemed to fade in and out. Sunshine thought that sounded vaguely like the ectoplasmic manifestations that FitzCardiff and Desiree had exhibited. The Party's trackers could find nothing.

A couple of days later, the Party passed through a hailstorm. As the sky cleared towards the end of the day, an encounter was bypassed with a group of mounted Mongols with hunting dogs and trained eagles.

Just at sunset, Ramsey saw a flash in the mountains ahead, as though the light had shown through some hole. "The ankh!" he guessed. The following evening, both Penrington and Forester spotted the brilliant flash as well.

At Zhongba, the Party left the Brahmaputra River to head SW towards Mustang. They rode across a ridge into a different river - the Kali Gandaki -- valley beyond which stood Annapurna. The riverbed looked as though it had once held a much wider river.

It was September when the Party rode into the valley of the city of Mustang. Due west could be seen the great ankh rising some 200 ft above a mountain. Forester, taking photographs, focussed on the nearby rocks as well and realized that they were much like the cliffs of the Anglian coast, complete with fossilized shells. He excitedly reported the discovery to the group: such fossils had never before been reported at such altitudes as this. Samples were collected.

The town of Mustang consisted of the by-now-familiar stone buildings. In the center of town was a small grove of trees. The Party's ponies gingerly picked their way across the dry river bed and entered the town past a black metal statue of an 8-armed dancing woman "vaguely Indian" in aspect to those who had been told that of the Omani statuettes. Nearby was a Buddhist temple lacking most of the ornate decorations seen heretofore. The people of the town avoided the newcomers, glancing at the travelers with suspicion.

Voronika and Penrington spent a few moments arguing as to whether going to the temple or the inn should be the first course of action. The inn, it was decided.

The people in the common room looked away from the newcomers. Steele shuffled towards the welcome warmth of the fire, warned against standing in it by Norgay because the locals considered fire sacred. [Actually true across the whole Tibetan plateau, not just in Mustang.] The innkeeper begrudgingly rented the Anglishmen space. He looked Mongolian albeit he spoke Tibetan. Penrington attempted a conversation, asking the innkeeper if he knew the Headman of the Tubal tribe the party had met two weeks before.
Innkeeper: "No."
Voronika then attempted to start up a conversation about the hillside ankh and discovered:

It was the "home of she whose name we do not speak. Very dangerous."
People who go up to the ankh, do not come back.
The valley itself "is protected by She of the many arms - Kali."
There is no temple to Kali. "You hold Kali in your heart."
The temple passed by on the edge of town was Buddhist.

Emboldened by thus much information, the gypsy asked about the central grove and discovered that it was common knowledge that such trees were necessary for death rites and "where else would you grow them?"

Voronika: "Have there been any other travelers recently?"
Innkeeper glanced briefly at Po and then back. "Just a man from Scotland."
The gypsy, wondering if possibly FitzCardiff had found a Scottish host-body, found:

The stranger had stayed for a couple of weeks.
He had strange devices to study places in the vicinity.
He left four days ago (at which the innkeeper glanced in the direction of the great ankh.)

There was no answer to the Party's knock at the Buddhist temple. As Po pushed the door open, Ramsey, Sister Sunshine and Penrington all thought they heard a gong - in the distance across town. All attention was directed to the body lying in the center of the courtyard. The druidess did a quick examination:

Asian male about 14 years old.
Dead of massive chest trauma: his chest had been cracked open and organs crushed aside in order to remove the heart.
His face had been obliterated by large claw marks while he was still alive.
His left hand was clenched around a Prayer Wheel piece marked with the tiger.

Gently Sunshine removed the Prayer Wheel piece and said a silent prayer to the local Old Ones for the boy's soul. Voronika, seeing no sign of the boy's spirit, or any spirit, retreated, shaken, to outside the temple gate. Penrington did a quick visual evaluation of the environs. There were two prayer wheels on the wall and no room for a third. There were no extra rooms, scriptorium or meditation, in the small unadorned place.

The general consensus was that the death should be reported lest it be held against the Anglish when discovered by the locals. As the group headed towards the central grove, the market closed down in its wake. No one was in the grove. No answer was made to knocks on the closed door of the largest building facing the grove.
Sunshine: "I have the feeling we're not wanted here."
Penrington: "Very perceptive!"

Back at the inn, Penrington reported the death to the innkeeper whose face was impassive as he muttered a non-committal, "Oh."
Voronika, impatiently: "Does this happen often?"
Innkeeper: "No."

The innkeeper quickly gave the Party a few brief explanations about their lodgings, set food on the table, and left. Feeling uncomfortable with the lack of hospitality evidenced, the druidess went out to the stable and checked on the ponies. Finally, she brought Wang Thang back to the main building, making no apology to the others as she led her pony into the common area. Immediately it walked over to the table around which the Party had gathered and kicked it over, dumping the food to the ground.

Wisely, the group realized that the food had been poisoned. Sunshine concocted an emetic, to void the stomachs of those who had already eaten - Penrington, Forester, and Ramsey. The former two were able to fight off the effects of the drugged food but Ramsey began to get drowsy. The druidess used her herbal skills to keep him awake and moving.

Deciding that attempting to leave and hide in the hills was better than staying in a known place and waiting to see what the locals had intended to do with their drugged guests, an exit was speedily planned and executed. Po spotted a watcher and so used an Illusion to try to hide the Party's actual direction.

As the ponies could climb at least partway up a mountain, the group headed upwards towards the ankh. The druidess supported Ramsey, who was still sick, on Wang Thang. Traveling at night was more uncomfortable than ever for Steele.
Po: "What happens if your fire goes out. Could you survive?"
Steele, weakly: "I do not know."
Eventually Penrington helped Voronika find a well-concealed place in which to camp. A fire couldn't be risked, so Penrington ordered that each watch pay particular attention to keeping Mr. Steele's internal flame stoked. Steele's abilities in the cold were too limited to be used on watch.

1st watch - Voronika & Po
2nd watch - Sunshine & Po for the first half, Penrington for the second half
3rd watch - Penrington & Forester

Come morning, Mr. Steele was alive but creaky; Mr. Ramsey was hung-over but hale.

Penrington proved to have a talent for picking his route up the mountain and thus the Party made a decent full-day's ascent. However, it became clear that the ankh would be reached only after nightfall. Po Clairvoyed:

The ankh stood on a granite outcrop.
There were cave entrances near the ankh.
There was a door in the base of the ankh.
The ankh reached up and up and up, 200-ft tall, 40-50-ft wide..
At the top of the ankh was an open trap door next to which stood a woman. "Mom!" The boy's eyes seemed to go into his mother and he ceased to see.

After the Chinese boy had explained his vision and that he felt that it was dangerous to go into the ankh, Penrington commented, "Your mother warned you?" Voronika added, "It's good that someone's looking out for you, too."

Penrington: "Who built this ankh and what does it mean?"
Ramsey: "It's impossible. If that crossbar is made of stone, it could not support itself."

Again the decision was made to make a concealed camp and tackle the unknown in the morning.

1st watch - Voronika & Po
2nd watch - Sunshine & Ramsey
3rd watch - Penrington & Forester

The group was tired and dehydrated when it made the final ascent to the ankh. The caves in the hillside were only natural in part. The floors had been smoothed. As the Party watched, cloaked and helmeted soldiers carrying bronzed-tipped spears emerged from the caves and formed a line. They had dark skin and were not Mongolian in feature. The crests on their helmets looked like black dogs' heads. Mr. Ramsey whispered, "Anubis."

Then the Egyptologist pulled out his notebook and limned the hieroglyphics "We come here as friends." A guard put out his hand. Ramsey gave him the piece of paper. The guard bowed, handed off the paper to his fellows and, again, put out his hand. Ramsey placed his own palm on the brown one. The soldier turned and led the Egyptologist into a cave. Penrington lifted his eyebrows and glanced around at his companions. With a suppressed sigh, the druidess joined the others as they followed Ramsey into the darkness.

The tunnel was lit by flickering sconces. The path led downwards. The air, though still thin, grew warmer. They entered a chamber wherein sat enthroned a dark-skinned Egyptian woman. She spoke and all understood, although the language was unfamiliar, "My Love, I'm glad you are back again."

Bemused, Ramsey allowed himself to be led up to the throne where the woman stood, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. His companions watched in various stages of shock or amazement as she then led the young man to a throne situated slightly lower than her own. She turned to the rest of the Party, "And we welcome you who accompanied our Love. You will be made comfortable. Go with my servants."

Sister Sunshine glanced at the Egyptologist, wondering if he wanted them to obey the woman and leave him, but Ramsey's bemused smile told her nothing. The group was led to rooms carved into the rock, doorways only curtained, and comfort provided by weavings and cushions. In one of the rooms lay a clearly injured Scotsman. Ignoring the impropriety, the druidess entered and checked the man's wounds: a broken arm, abrasions and contusions presumably from a fall, and the effects of exposure. Hoping to augment his own healing sleep, the druidess sat down next to the stranger and started her Regeneration spell. Quietly the gypsy slipped into the room and settled down to play chaperone for the unconventional healer.

Steele commented, "Okay, we've got a lot of dog references this trip. The dogs owned by the Mongols, the dog in the Shatar game, and Anubis. Note that if these Egyptians are supposed to be analogous to the pieces in Shatar, then Ramsey (or whoever he's being mistaken for) is the dog? (Assuming the higher throne is for the key piece.) I haven't noticed any camels yet, though."

Sister Sunshine countered: "Heretofore none of us has had to assume the aspect of the Prayer Wheel piece for which we searched. They were -- by and large -- found in a context that -- in somewise -- echoed their symbol." She seemed to repress an unpleasant emotion, "I certainly hope that we don't have to pry the dog piece from Ramsey's hand after he has been savaged by jackals. Two such deaths have been quite enough, to my mind."

Next Run: My Love?

(a) Cumulative (b) Cumulative since Volume II (c) Cumulative since Volume III

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