I'm definitely not gonna be able to keep up with play reports for every session now that school's back in. You're getting the highlights.
While Xerxes does his best to staunch the bleeding from the arrow Tailor just left in his leg, Thomas and Tree follow her into the old seafort. It looks to be in rough shape, the tower partly collapsed. Hailing the guards to open the gate, Tailor sends her men to take stock of the PCs' tribute while she brings them to meet the boss.
The Black Dog Bandits
The Dogs are led by Monastery Burner, who doesn't bother introducing herself to the two escaped pit slaves her lieutenant brings her. They don't make the best first impression. If they want in, they're going to help her with a little errand. A friend recently sold her a map purported to lead to an ancient forge up in the mountains to the west, where magic blades were made once. She wants the PCs to find it, if it exists, and bring back proof.
They'll have help, and supervision, from Flint, newest member of the Black Dogs and new replacement PC for Yuri's former player. The soot-streaked kid with the bulging pack tells Thomas and Tree to keep their distance from him if they plan on lighting any torches--he is apparently very flammable. Before heading out, the party ask if they can have their cart back, now emptied; with Flint's encouragement, Monastery Burner reluctantly agrees.
With map and cart in hand, the three head back outside the walls to recollect Xerxes, who's managed not to bleed out. Flint takes a look at the wound, but it's beyond his skill. He knows a doctor in Velm who could probably help. The others aren't too keen on going near town, given the whole escaped slave thing still ongoing, but they decide it's a risk they'll have to take. They camp out beneath the fort's walls for the night before setting off, Xerxes bundled uncomfortably into the cart.
Velm
The journey back west through the hills proves uneventful. By afternoon of the second day, the party gets their first sight of Velm's walls. For all but Flint, it's by far the largest structure they've ever seen. The watchers at the gates are alarmed to see the wounded Xerxes in the cart, asking if the Black Dogs got them; the party wisely takes advantage of the ready excuse. The watchers are distracted enough from any questions about the group's identities to usher them inside.
The doctor, Tonie, scolds the PCs for getting themselves in a position to be shot and Flint for handling the wound like an amateur. She can take care of it, but first the group must overcome their poverty. Flint offers some of his "product" in trade; no sell. She agrees to accept some strong spirit he has left and makes it clear this is the last time she does him a favor.
Properly dressed now, Xerxes' wound still needs time to heal. The market square is dizzying to the pit-dwellers. Tree, remembering the hand he hacked off the metal-plated figure in the underground chamber, asks Flint if he knows anything about it. Flint, surprised, recognizes the metal as aldsteel, the stuff of the gods, said to be indestructible by anything but itself. The group agrees selling it could be a good way to cover some living expenses. A merchant points them to the smithy. Juno, the smith, quickly does her best to hide her amazement from the rubes, and they end up settling for a steal of 75 motes--not that she knows how to work the stuff anyway.
Asalam, the oily innkeep, is happy to rent the group a private room for a week. Deciding to hole up and avoid attention, the group wiles away their time until Xerxes can walk again before bidding Velm farewell.
The map says to follow the southern source of the river to its origin. The pit-dwellers entertain thoughts of showing Flint their crash site, but don't pass as close as they expected. The kid is fascinated by the story of their meeting with the luminous figure in the underground chamber; clearly, these men are blessed by the gods somehow. As he ponders the matter, Thomas, eyes peeled for a conspicuous X on the ground, trips into a hidden recess in the mountain slope, finding himself before a set of mighty aldsteel doors into the rock....
The Calcifer Shrine
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| Credit to Dyson, barely had time to key this one but fuck it we ball |
The stonework is immediately familiar to the pit-dwellers from the chamber they explored, and Flint can only guess it must be the work of the gods, finer than any human tools could make. A great frieze of a smith at work, flanked by hounds, greets the explorers, seeming to move in their torchlight. The first door they try, south into 6, is heavy aldsteel without a visible mechanism; heat radiates from it. Xerxes, accustomed to it from his smithing days, tries pushing it open and finds his hands blistering. The party moves on.
To the north, their torchlight reveals what at first appears to be statues standing in the alcoves, but reveal themselves on approach to be suits of some kind of armor, two present. Each encases the whole body, with a clear plate for the visor, the rest made of some flexible dark grey stuff that isn't metal. Tree, feeling adventurous, steps into one, which seals around him on its own; as it does, he realizes he no longer feels the heat of this place. Since it seems to be safe, Flint takes the other suit.
West, and the party find themselves in a cavernous space, flickering firelight dancing across the walls from some unseen source far brighter than their torch. The room is dominated by an assembly of great rings half emerging from the floor, nested one within the next, all at different angles. In the center, above a metal alter--or anvil?--floats a sword, wreathed in a firelight nimbus.
Xerxes tries to approach, because hey, he's a smith. Before he can pass the innermost ring, flames flare to life in the far alcoves. Four-legged beasts take shape, approaching the altar. Xerxes expects an attack, but they merely pad do the southern door, herding the party over before waiting patiently. The message is clear.
In the passageway beyond, the group circles back northeast to confirm the layout. As they turn to head back again, they come face to face with three wandering oil gremlins. Tree's immediate reaction is to throw his torch at the one in front. His arm is good; it lights up, sizzling and melting as it flees in desperate panic. A failed morale roll sends its friends after it. The party follows at a distance.
South into the four-way intersection. The door west is scratched, dented, and splattered with crude oil. To the east, burbling and banging sounds. Further south, silence. South again first. At the end of the long passageway, a break from the heat. Great floes of ice burst from broken pipes and tubing, connecting back to a great cylindrical metal vat, rimed with frost. A figure stands frozen within the ice, upright, but headless. Xerxes and Tree recognize it--another of the metallic beings they met before, though this one seems more slight, less imposing. Flint can only surmise it's a Guardian, one of those who watch over the gods' old holy places. It seems to have been frozen in the middle of trying to reconnect one of the damaged hoses.
The group continues east, turning north. The door ahead is more heavy aldsteel, but this time bearing a wheel that looks meant to be turned. Tree gives it a try. There's a series of thumps, a hiss of pressure, then...nothing. The PCs figure they're missing something.
Back to the far west intersection, then east this time, into the room where they heard the burbling and banging. The explorers immediately realize they're not alone. More oil gremlins are hard at work attempting to smash banks of machinery in each of the alcoves along the walls, with limited success. They stop at the intrusion. One speaks. "Who...you?"
The PCs are open to talking. The gremlin asks if they've come to destroy this place; it tells them of its kind's desire to break the machines, to claim the blade, and to be free to leave and destroy all they like with its power. Tree is curious about why the gremlins are so bent on destruction, but the gremlins aren't really equipped for self-examination. Frustrated and suspicious, they attack.
Tree quickly lights up the first one. Since fire seems to work so well, Flint decides to bring out some of his product. A flask of glowing blue-white liquid emerges from his pack; with a good throw, it explodes into blue flames that reduce two more gremlins to oil in a second. The remaining two are braver this time, but they turn out to die just fine to Flint's spear and Xerxes' hammer.
The party is left to examine the machines in the alcoves. Each bears another turn-wheel and a symbol of the First Speech, which Flint doesn't recognize. Xerxes tries one of the wheels. With a hiss of pressure, a glowing bar illuminates part of the chamber ceiling, filling up a series of seven notches--a gauge. With a couple more lucky guesses, the explorers figure out a combination that seems to work; from somewhere in the distance, they hear a rumbling of something activating, and the machines cease to respond.
(This is a super easy puzzle I stole from Mass Effect. You have 5 buttons, marked 5, 7, 11, 13, and 17. You have to press three buttons that total between 31 and 34. They got it in two tries by guesswork even without being able to read the numbers--I had the gauge on the ceiling be marked with visible notches, so they just went by that.)
Unsure of what they just did, the group heads back into the intersection. Last unexplored way is the battered door to the west. Beyond, a roughly cubic block of machinery, clearly damaged by the partial collapse of the ceiling, has leaked black oil over the whole floor. In the south of the chamber, several more gremlins are trying to break down another of the heavy aldsteel doors, so far apparently without success.
The party lights the floor on fire. The gremlins go bye-bye. The players are excited to walk in and see what's up, until I remind them that the room is currently on fire. They'll have to wait a while.
Back to the room with the ice. Seeing that the frozen Guardian seems to have been trying to reconnect some of the tubing, they figure maybe they should try to do the same. They quickly discover that the ice is no mere frozen water; Tree comes into contact with some trying to chip at it with his pickaxe, and is only saved from a nasty burn by his new ancient armor. Getting the idea, the group spends several turns trying to figure out a way to repair the mechanisms without having to smash open all the ice floes and risk releasing more of the coolant. They burn through their only torch while they're at it, improvising a replacement using Flint's spear and some of the crude oil dripped by the gremlins. After a couple more turns of debating, though, they decide they aren't making any headway just now. Resolving to regroup overnight and return with the hopefully recovered Thomas in tow, the party retraces their steps back out of the dungeon and emerges into the light of the setting sun, still empty-handed for now.
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