The Moloch: a setting sourcebook for KULT

Chapter 19: Downward Bound

With the help of the Nephilim the PCs reach the lowest part of the local underworld of the Moloch - a large grate in the floor a good 50 meters beneath which sewage and natural ground water mingles in a maelstrom and forms a subterranean river disappearing down a cave. The way down is blocked by some kind of spider's net made from ropes. At the level of the net halfway down a ring of caves leads away - the hiding place of degenerated worshippers of Achlys. Thanks to food and certain trinkets the PCs are able to negotiate safe passage downwards and are shown a narrow path which the can follow just above the water.

After hours, if not days of spelunking the PCs reach a place where actual corridors with doors exist - the rooms behind the doors seem to have contained large machinery once, there are still some fixtures visible, but the actual machinery is gone. But there is a sound of machinery in a far away place.

The PCs follow that sound and find a large room where arcane machinery is still functional - there is no determining what it does, but judging from the sound at least parts of it in remote corners of the room are active. Then the PCs find they are not alone.

The room is the lair of a Nepharite far from hell who has been entrapped by the Moloch. In an area not far from here a large tribe of half-humans lives, and the Nepharite is capturing their children and keeping them in a cage for eventually feeding them into a furnace (a maw of the Moloch). The PCs manage to both evade the Nepharite and free the children (some of which can actually leave the room alive) - later the PCs meet with their tribe.

The tribe lives in a chasm between almost vertical cliff faces in a structure built from metal girders and parts of machinery. They catch the PCs initially, but when it is found out that they have freed the children they are brought down to the floor of the chasm and set free.

The PCs find themselves near a street after they have walked for hours until the walls of the chasm finally widen into open space. The street has the quality of molten, then frozen lava - the direction into which it seems to have flowed is the only direction the street allows to travel. The street shows signs of having been used extensively - the feet of travellers have dug a shallow trench in its middle. Walking down that street the PCs find the corpses of former travellers by the wayside - beings too strange for description in advanced states of decomposition.

After a while other human travellers appear on the street, until the PCs find themselves in the middle of a death march. The other humans are Jews marched by SS to their final destination - a last attempt by the Nepharite Kurt 1 has become to stop the PCs. The Nepharite has no actual power over the PCs here, but there is still a chance to stop them. After a long and arduous journey the PCs are ordered out from the throng and the soldiers open fire. Kurt stays with the prisoners and is killed and thrown into a mass grave with the other dead - he is not entirely dead (physically dead but still conscious) but cannot free himself on his own. The others are forced to help throwing the corpses into the grave, and when that is finished the Nepharite orderes the PCs to turn back. Then he and his soldiers disappear.

Ktonor is not far away at that time. With Kurt dead, Delgado and the remaining PCs enter the city of darkness, using the ointment and the map to find their way. On a bridge near the central temple Delgado shoots both remaining PCs from behind. They die on the spot. Delgado takes the tokens they have assembled and clutching them jumps into the river which drags him away into Achlys - there to atone for his self-perceived guilt regarding the disappearance of his baby brother when he was a child.

When Delgado falls into the abyss and passes from existence, taking the tokens with him, reality is rewritten and all PCs find themselves back in a present day Moloch without any knowledge about the above events. Their lives are considerably different, but at least they are not hunted anymore, nor do they recall ever having been.

And the Moloch lurks on...