Virgins Of The Sun

An adventure for Lima PCs, working for Morris’ Bar.

Priests with bulging bellies huddled over an emaciated corpse in a Cusco alleyway. Guts straining their cassocks. Round hats. Gleaming red eyes.

From their mouths protrude squirming lamprey parasites. Maws clamped to the flesh of the unfortunate dead peasant. Sucking out his fat.

Their obese leader Bishop Máximo Farfán lurking in the crypts under Cusco Cathedral. Weeping silent greasy tears. He doesn’t want to be the thing he is.

Maria Angola bell greased with regurgitated human fat. Solemn peal is audible for miles. Induces paroxysms of sourceless grief. Noticeable effect on the city’s mood. People talk about it. Attribute it to a change in the weather or the Devil’s passing shadow.

In squares and covered markets Quechuas in hats and ponchos sell potatoes, fried pork belly, pan flutes, jungle fruit, wooden dolls. Bundles of coca leaves. Guitars made from armadillo shells. Vibrant red alpaca blankets adorned with blocky figures in obscure ritual poses. Copper kettles. Lottery tickets. Roasted guinea pig.

Everyone knows someone who’s disappeared. The chatter is subdued.

Luis Valcárcel. Cuzco’s top intellectual. Writes for half a dozen newspapers. Lectures on anthropology at the Colegio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes. Directs the Inca Museum in the Casa del Almirante colonial mansion.

Passionate progressive reformer. Author of Storm Over the Andes. Contributes to Amauta, the leftist journal of José Mariátegui. Can talk for hours about indigenous rights, the evils of the Spaniards and the coming Inca-led communist revolution.

Doesn’t know what’s going on. Would like you to find out.

At the Sacsayhuamán fortress in the hills above Cusco, aviator J. M. Nightspore is working on his plane. Also greased with human fat. Runs like a dream. He makes daily test flights - sends the priests to fetch him more when his fat supply runs out.

He’s planning a voyage to Arcturus. Upgrading his plane to run on ancient Incan starship technology, purchased by Pachacuti from the mi-go at great expense.

He just got back from Machu Picchu - chief engineer on the second Bingham Expedition. Devout Mormon from Cincinnati. Active in the Explorers’ Club of New York City - carries one of their flags. Intends to plant it as far into deep space as he can manage.

Keeps a wooden crate full of fatworms. Needs them to fuel his schemes for galactic travel. They don’t last long in sunlight - will make it a priority to crawl into your mouth.

Virgins of the Sun.

The most skilled and physically perfect women in the Inca empire. Sent to the Qorichanka solar temple in Cusco, the imperial capital, to act as sacred artisans and high priestesses of the sun god Inti.

Taught to weave. Brew chicha. Entertain guests. Conduct human sacrifices. Feed the holy panthers. Make gold into flowers, corncobs, windup birds. Polish the temple mirrors, used to bathe captured soldiers in radiant sunlight until they go blind and mad. Only those blessed with true hollowness of spirit are initiated as Azathoth devotees.

Flee to Machu Picchu, abandoned mountaintop estate of Pachacuti, after the siege of Cusco and the Spanish conquest. Reproduce through parthenogenesis. Live in solitude, handing down the secrets of Azathoth to their clone daughters, for the next four hundred years.

Led by Yanakilla.

Blind. Wrinkled. Ancient. Impossible to say how old she is. Huddled in a shawl. Dead black liquid eyes. Cobweb-light hair. Sees with her hands. Always knows where you’re standing. Quicker than you expect.

Use the intihuatana ritual stone to open gates to other worlds.

Arcturus, Celeano, Noachian Mars. Starry portals gaping in the sky above the jungle valleys. Changing with the seasons - certain places and moments in time accessible only at the winter solstice or during a lucky conjugation of Jupiter and Mars. Entities squirming through. The Virgins of the Sun adopt them as pets and husbands - create their own private extraterrestrial zoo.

Hiram Bingham III.

Grandson of the first man to introduce Christianity to Hawaii. Born and raised in Honolulu. Joins the Freemasonic Skull-and-Bones Club at Yale - masturbates in a coffin, worships the lawyer goddess Eulogia, prostrates himself before Martin van Buren’s chattering skull in a windowless neo-Gothic tomb.

Becomes professor of Latin American history. Inspired by a Lemurian stone map given to his grandfather by Queen Ka’ahumana to organise the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition.

Led to Machu Picchu by fat alcoholic peasant farmer Melchor Arteaga. Meets the Virgins. Falls in love.

Returns to Connecticut. Divorces his wife. Marries Pariwana, daughter of Yanakilla and a Martian sorn with shameful inclinations. Bright eyes. Perpetual smile. Almost-translucent skin. Heirloom cloak of feathers. Introduced as a pure-blooded criollo girl from an old conquistador family to his snooty New Haven friends.

Gets himself elected to the Senate to replace incumbent Frank Brandegee, whose suicide is unexplained. Appointed by Calvin Coolidge to the President’s Aircraft Board. Plans the future of American aviation policy. Oversees the cover-up and salvage for experimental purposes of several New Mexico UFO crashes by J. Edgar Hoover’s Investigation Bureau. Dubbed “the Flying Senator” by the press.

Sent back to Machu Picchu in 192X on behalf of the US government to initiate diplomatic contact with whatever variety of alien life seems most amenable to the promotion of American national interests. Now camped out among the ruins with a detachment of soldiers. Climbs up to Yanakilla’s hut on Huayna Picchu every morning to experiment with portals and pay homage to the sun.

Discovered strange engines in the cavernous Temple of the Moon on the far side of the mountain. Has put army engineers in charge of operating these.

Watchers on the hilltops. Mexican-American Sergeant Rafael Carrasco plays cards with Georgian Zebulon Finn in a guardhouse by the side of the winding road that leads up from Aguas Calientes, the small railway workers’ encampment in the jungle valley of the Urabamba at the bottom of the hill.

Both have been warned in strong terms not to touch the Virgins. Both uneasy. Not sure what goes on up there. Zebulon, who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, thinks the ruins are Satanic - would explode them if he could.

Alien life escapes into the Sacred Valley of the Incas, to the southeast, between Machu Picchu and Cusco. Terrorizing peasants. Preying on stray llamas. Each farmhouse has its oddly-shaped potato - idol of Axomamma, the potato goddess. Muttered prayers for protection. Candles burn before retablos - boxed dioramas of saints.

Polygonal crystal hive minds who communicate through flickering heat rays that etch runes onto your skin. Fungus that hijacks the condor nervous system and turns the bird’s ribcage into a hollow nest of slimy wasps. Lonely white Martian ape haunting the Inca ruins at Ollantaytambo, fed by a small boy who thinks it’s his only friend.

Shards of the impossible colour ulfire lodging in the brains of artists - everything they paint turns to dust. Extra organs looking for a host - neck nodules that make you telepathic, heart-burrowing tendril that increases your capacity for love. Vampiric shivering artichoke gremlins with needles for fingers and leeches for hair. Packs of dogsized kangaroo rats with rotting fleshless faces and wicked backwards teeth who clamp on and don’t let go.

La Uma - the Witch’s Head. Bulging eyes. Teeth too big for her mouth. Vermicelli hair - actually thousands of little tendrils she can walk on. Deterred by cacti - hair catches in the thorns. Harmless. Just wants to scare you. Worshipped by clan of curandera witches who believe she has power they can use. They gather on dark hillsides and in Cusco’s Almudena Cemetery, sacrificing chickens and complaining when she doesn’t show up.

Matai Thang, the Holy Thern. Lord of the Black Martians. Permanently surprised expression on his face - artifact of his biology that in no way expresses his true feelings. Has established a court at Vilcabamba, the Plain of the Spirits, decrepit capital of the neo-Inca state, where Tupac Amaru held out for decades after the Spanish conquest. Worships a round egg. Gathering rebels to his cause.

Master of the Ninth Ray. Brokering a deal where he trades the secret of cosmic teleportation to the US government in exchange for material support. Intends to reactivate Manco Capac’s satellite laser cannons, launched into orbit sometime in the 1200s during an abortive military standoff with the Serpent Men, and hold the world to ransom. Would-be galactic conqueror. The soft world of humanity is made for him to rule.