The Mists Of Chaos

An adventure for Shanghai PCs, working for Uncle Ho.

Ping Luo, poor labourer, shows up on Ho’s doorstep unannounced.

Emaciated. Mad-eyed. Dressed in rags. Shoeless. Ringworm. Visible ribs. Shoulders callused purple. Ho is feeding him roast duck - first good meal he’s had in months.

The tea calms him down. He has a story to tell.

Ping was an engine hand on the USS Palos.

A Yangtze Patrol gunship. Dispatched by the US Navy to protect American treaty ports along the river’s upper reaches.

Leshan. Known for its giant stone Buddha. On the banks of the Min in central Sichuan where the mountains meet the plains. About as far west as the Yangtze Marines can go.

Close to Mount Emei. Sacred peak where Buddhism first came to China. Seventy-six monasteries. Home to countless sages. Masters of Shaolin kung fu.

Buddhist acolyte staggers aboard the ship. Li. Demands sanctuary. Tattered robes.

Shoves something into the captain’s hands. Egg of dark green stone. Possibly malachite. Visibly cracked.

The Chaos Egg.

Confiscated by Shaolin monks in 1647 from the Sichuan rebel king Zhang Xianzhong, the Yellow Tiger, famous for his massacres. Guarded on Mount Emei ever since. Contains a piece of Hundun, the faceless incestuous chaos that existed before time.

Eventually consumed the monastery. Kung fu combat to the death. Li only survived because his kung fu is so poor he posed no threat.

Captain Rex Lynch, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, had heard plenty of strange stories in his decade of China service. Ascribed most of them to Oriental superstition. Presumed this was no different. Stored the Chaos Egg in his cabin safe. Found the acolyte a bunk.

Set a course for Chongqing. East along the Yangtze. Never made it to Shanghai.

Ping Luo wants you to fetch the Egg. Uncle Ho can protect it. Send it to a nunnery in Argentina, run by friends of his, where he thinks it’ll be safe.

Three connected cities on the banks of the Yangtze.

Hankow. In the north. Busy docks. Wide European-style Bund. Foreign merchants. Godowns. Race tracks. Little shops in the Chinese part of town.

Hanyang. Across the Han Creek. Ironworks. Gun factories. Student radicals. China’s largest arsenal, full of Mauser rifles, established by the Qing.

Wuchang. Across the wide Yangtze. Fishermen in sampans. Wetlands. Dozens of misty lakes. Junks on the river. Pagodas on the shore.

Halfway up the country. On the route of the Kuomintang’s Northern Expedition. Also halfway along the Yangtze between Shanghai and Chongqing.

KMT troops have just taken the three cities. United them under a single government. Dominated by the Left. Called it Wuhan.

This government’s authority is already crumbling. Finances collapse as traders flee the city. Peasant insurgents claim land in the countryside.

Godowns burn. Factory workers go on strike. Howling anti-foreign mobs burn old missionary women alive. Terrified refugees flood into the city. Women’s committees demand an end to footbinding and the patriarchal family structure.

A few scowling British tea merchants nurse gin slings on the verandahs of their well-guarded clubs. Watching the boats on the Yangtze. Reminiscing about the good old days.

The KMT is split between Left and Right factions.

Eugene Chen. Minister of the Left Faction of the KMT. Diplomat. Smooth-tongued. Born in Trinidad. Once a wealthy lawyer there.

Backed by the Chinese Communist Party. Funded and supplied by the Soviet Union.

More or less running Wuhan. Called a plenary session of the KMT Central Committee. Wants to consolidate power before marching to Beijing.

Trapped in endless committee meetings. Believes, to a degree, in liberal democracy. Trying to maintain a degree of separation from the Reds.

Chiang Kai-shek. Leader of the Right Faction of the KMT. Military hardliner. Ambitious. Violent. Acts on impulse. Grew up poor.

Has established a military government in nearby Nanchang. Rabidly anti-Communist. Believes that all Reds should be shot on sight.

Successfully purged the Left from the KMT in Guangzhou. Plotting a massacre of leftists in Shanghai. Anticipates a permanent KMT split.

Wu Peifu. Former warlord of Hankow. Driven out by the KMT. Has retreated to Zhengzhou. Would like the city back.

Jade Marshal. Philosopher General. Best strategist in China.

Owns the world’s largest diamond. Keeps a shrine to George Washington in his office. Classical Chinese education. Ornate dress uniform. Black silk robes. Fastidious about his moustache.

Captain Lynch, clean-shaven, strangely calm, plies the length of the Yangtze between Wuhan and Chongqing.

USS Palos manned by Chaos Marines and river brigands. Secret hideout somewhere in the Three Gorges. Takes his captives there.

Egg still intact. Bleeding luminous mist in Lynch’s safe. Hold full of pulsing flesh. The flesh also exudes mist.

Mist inhalers become chaos mutants. A variety of forms. Bulging hunks of muscle. Emaciated goblins. Blind muck-digging grubs. Some appear normal - go mad, gain the power to cloud men’s minds.

Lynch travels to Wuhan. Sells gobbets of mutagenic flesh. Likes to be paid in captives - has no use for cash.

Mikhail Borodin. Eugene Chen’s Soviet advisor.

Personal OGPU death squad. Instructed by Stalin to secure the Egg. Grow a Red mutant army.

Breeds his own chaos spawn in an abandoned bicycle factory along the Hankow Bund. Sends examples of his work to Moscow by train in unmarked crates. Bat-winged albino police drones. Swarms of crawling eyes. Lobster hulks with exposed brains.

Zhang Zongchang, the Dogmeat General of Shandong, has kidnapped his wife Fanya. Holding her hostage in his decadent palace in Jinan. Demanding he fetch the Egg. Works for Wu Fang, the legendary criminal mastermind.

Chiang and Wu Peifu both have agents in Wuhan. Brewing their own mutants in homemade chaos pits.

Empty godowns. Bank vaults. Sailors’ bars. Lakeside temples. All pressed into service in the mutagenic war. Hunched figures scamper across midnight rooftops. Protoplasmic dumplings float in the river’s soup.

River dolphins sprout tentacles. Cormorants choke on fish. Capsized honey barges convey liquid sewage to the fields upstream.

Pop-eyed pirates. Steam explosions. Mermaids. Pistol duels at dawn over sacks of Mexican silver dollars. Ambushes from groves of purple bamboo.

Two-Gun Cohen. Ambidextrous gunfighter from Saskatchewan. Former bodyguard to Sun Yat-Sen. Expert card sharp. Pickpocket. Can shoot out the eye of a dragonfly at a hundred paces.

Up from Canton. Hunting the Egg for the KMT banker T. V. Soong. Planning to keep it for himself.

Mao Zedong. Communist. On the KMT Committee. Brutalising Chen in all the meetings.

Pushing to declare war on Chiang. Abolish all rent payments. Execute anyone found guilty of counter-revolutionary thought.

Relentless. Never tires. Terrorises moderates with unfounded accusations of complicity in the worst imperialist atrocities he can devise.

Preparing a comprehensive report on rural exploitation. Planning an uprising of twenty million peasants that will sweep the old tyrant class away.

Manic slogan-barking students chase his rivals down the street. Kidnap politicians who note flaws in his logic and force-feed them broken glass.

Frightening to be around him. You can tell he’s going to win.

Breeding a new race of super-peasants in a tea warehouse by the river. Annexed by the Communists. Formerly operated by John Swire & Sons, Ltd. Junks hauled up onto the mud flats. New war boats under construction. Slogans pasted everywhere.

Square-jawed entities in coveralls. Striding confidently through the marketplace with gigantic logs over their shoulders. Working in perfect harmony. No organs - whole body forged from the same wet, pasty, claylike substance.

Repelled by fire, fingerprints, the touch of human skin. Serve Mao’s will without hesitation. Believe anything he says. Intended as a model for the people to emulate. Capable of speech, through lipless orifices. Zero original thought.

A squad of Shaolin monks from Mount Emei.

Masters of kung fu. Able to deflect bullets, defeat twenty men each in single combat. Wield meteor hammers. Sabre-tipped polearms. Sharpened spades.

Master Yu, their leader, says he’s on your side. Asks you to bring him the Egg. Accuses you of pro-chaos sentiment if you decline.

Eyes gleam red. Veins throb. Joints bend the wrong way.

Wants to attain complete mastery over his body. Become a god. Reduce the universe to a state of primal chaos.

All in accordance with his understanding of the teachings of Shaolin.