Feros's Iron Gods Campaign

[Feros]

Iron Gods

And on the far rim of consciousness, a scurrying, a fleeting impression of something rushing toward him, across leagues of black mirror.
He tried to scream.
Neuromancer, William Gibson

A fantasy/Sci-fi campaign. If you intend to play in this campaign at some time, be warned that there are major spoilers ahead.

[Feros]

Session 1:

On Arodus the 5th, 4714, a group of five people came together to descend into the caves below the town of Torch on the Numerian Plains to rescue a lost wizard and try to discover why the purple flame from which the settlement derives its name had gone out.

Eight days prior, the great purple bonfire that allowed the smiths of Torch to work with skymetals suddenly went out. Since then, the economy of the settlement was put in jeopardy and many people began suffering from splitting headaches. An investigation revealed some caves could be accessed through a water filled channel and that someone had entered there just weeks before.

Desperate to find out what was wrong and get the torch burning again, the council offered a reward of 6000 gp to discover what had happened and get the flame burning again. Five expeditions had gone in and only the third one—led by town councillor and wizard Khonnir Baine—had returned. But the fifth expedition was also led by the wizard and didn’t come back.

A local starmetal smith gnome by the name of Bellatrix Hopkirk and her dwarven stonemason friend Dugald Glodson had joined up with a pair of human wizards to volunteer to go in to the passages beneath the town. Victoria was the daughter of a local illusionist, but she was more fascinated with necromancy and technology than illusions. The illusionist’s apprentice was a travelling Taldan entertainer and stage magician named Eduard who enhances his performances with real magic.

The wizards were accompanied by an undead male Kellid named Aedann. He was a form of lesser revenant called a geiswicht and was not evil. He was vouched for by the wizards, although Eduard had his reservations. Since he didn’t stink or look as though he was rotting, the others accepted him provisionally but with serious doubts.

The wizard they had to rescue was one of the Town council, Khonnir Baine. A very popular figure in the town, Baine had already led one successful expedition into the caves and returned with some idea of the layout and a damaged automaton of some sort. His second expedition left two days prior and had not returned. Everyone fears the worst, especially his adopted daughter Val.

To get information and any help they could get, the party went to speak with Dolga Freddert, a dwarven town councillor. Dolga was at first concerned about Aedann when they approached, but when Victoria stated that they wanted to go and find Khonnir Baine she brightened right up. She informed them that the underwater passage going into the caves can be found leading into Weeping Pond. To help get them in, Joram Kyte—a cleric of the goddess Brigh and fellow town councillor—will cast water breathing on any group wanting to enter the caves free of charge. Val Baine had also offered her father’s tavern, the Foundry, as a base to work from also free of charge. She was also able to provide a 20% discount on any gear they needed to purchase.

Dolga also informed them of everything Khonnir reported on finding on the third expedition. There were several large vermin, shadowy humanoids, and a nest of gremlins down there before they got to a glaucite (Numerian steel) wall with a door in it. He found the damaged automaton right before the door.

Thanking the councillor, the party headed to the Foundry to talk with Val and establish their headquarters. As they approached the Foundry, they heard a scream of terror coming from the small stone house behind the tavern. They rushed over to the house and Bellatrix looked in a window to see the damaged automaton had reactivated and was attacking Val.

Bellatrix opened the doors and she ran in to help while Eduard fired his crossbow and Victoria threw her dagger through the window. Dugold charged in and smashed into little bits with one blow from his earthbreaker. Val was very grateful and glad to see Victoria, Bellatrix, and the rest of their friends. When she was told about their intention to go into the caves, she was delighted and let them set up their headquarters. Bellatrix salvaged parts and gear from the broken automaton.

They went out and picked up some gear and talked to Joram Kyte at the temple of Brigh. Kyte cast a detect evil spell on Aedann before he continued negotiations and was a still a bit unnerved about his undead status. Kyte told them in defiance of their objections that undead were a blight, and he would be keeping an eye on Aedann as they went forward.

Kyte agreed to cast water breathing, but they would only have six hours before they would have to get back to Torch after he cast the spell. They made their final preparations and then met Kyte at the Weeping Pond. They swam up the flow out of the caves and emerged in a small cave with a stony, soot-scarred beach. Dugold struggled with his armor and fell behind. A five-foot-high ledge with stalagmites was to the east leading to a low-ceilinged cave.

Bellatrix lit up a sunrod and they began to advance and explore. As they did so, five fire beetles scuttled out and attacked them. Bellatrix slew one with her axe and Aedann one with his greatsword. Eduard missed with his crossbow but Victoria killed one with hers. Bellatrix and Aedann killed the last two when Dugold finally joined them.

After the fight, they began to explore the stalagmite filled cave after Bellatrix collected some of the phosphorescent goo from one of the fire beetles bodies. Eduard and Dugold slipped a bit climbing up into the cave, but soon they were all up. Huginn noticed that someone was hiding behind a stone column and alerted the group. The person moved into their light and he was revealed to be a humanoid with light gray skin, silver hair, and slate eyes. He calmly told them to be not alarmed.

The newcomer was dressed in torn clothes that looked like they were worn by someone who had been violently killed, torn and bloodstained. He identified himself as an android and he asked for their aid. He had no name and no memory aside from the last two days. He surmised that his progenitor had been killed violently based on the clothes he was wearing, but then he somehow had renewed.

He explained that when androids get very old, they shut down and are completely rebuilt by the small devices—called nanites—that were in every android’s blood. Renewal doesn’t occur with violent death though; the new born android had no explanation as to how he might have come into existence. He also had much more vivid flashes of memory from his progenitor than would normally be transmitted, making him far more capable than a two day old android normally would be.

He also mentioned that his flashes of insight from his progenitor revealed to him that he had travelled there with a group that was interested in the artifacts and technology down here. Whatever they were doing, his progenitor had decided that they were in the wrong. He apparently confronted the leader of the group about this. The android looked at his ragged, bloodstained clothes and stated, “Apparently that was an error.”

The party agreed to let the android accompany them back to the surface and they continued to explore the cave they were in. There they found a body that the android had been careful not to disturb. Victoria recognized the corpse as that of a female half-orc named Parda Garr—a popular brawler in Torch— and that she was one of those who traveled with several thugs into the caverns as part of the second expedition. She died some six days ago.

Victoria tried to surreptitiously take a skin sample from the android, but Huginn loudly told her to stop it. Dugald asked whether the android knew if the people his progenitor came in with were part of the Technic League. The android did not know who that was until a flash of insight brought forth a number of basic facts about the evil technomancers. He was unable to confirm or deny the League’s involvement.

They travelled down the tunnel at the back of the cave and headed east. They found a dark cavern with a twenty-foot-high ceiling covered in stalactites. There was a rocky shore next to a pool and stream, and a small garden of toadstools and dark mold next to the shore. Amongst the toadstools Bellatrix saw a short and vaguely humanoid frog.
As it attacked Eduard hit it with his crossbow as Aedann charged in to strike it with his greatsword, but missed. The creature’s eyes blasted out a blast of light that blinded Aedann and the android. The creature bit Dugald after he ran up to the blindheim to help. Bellatrix also moved in and missed with her axe as Victoria and Eduard fired their crossbows in vain.

Dugald took another claw strike as did Bellatrix before being killed by Dugald’s earthbreaker. As they searched the area as they waited for Aedann and the android to recover from blindness, which they determined would take an hour. They found a rapier which the android said felt familiar in his hand, so they gave it to him to replace the rock he was wielding. Huginn noticed a body at the edge of the water. The body was badly eaten, so they just looted it—they found a belt pouch with coinage, a silver holy symbol of Zyphus, and some cure light wounds potion.

As they waited the hour, Dugald and Bellatrix waded downstream to check out an area that the android had only glanced as he had scouted the area he woke in for dangers: an area next to the stream covered in fungus. As they investigated, Bellatrix threw the last embers of her glowing fire beetle goo into the midst of three piles of mold, causing the molds to come to life and attack them. Dugald and Bellatrix fought the molds and successfully defeated them, but they took some damage before they defeated them, forcing them to use some of the cure potions.

Under the mold had been the bodies of the second expedition, a group of Halflings. Bellatrix found an agate, but otherwise they had been all looted beforehand. They waited out the remaining time to let the android and Aedann recover before moving on.

They found a crossroads of sorts with crates, boxes, rubble, and scavenged metal lying heaped to the northwest of the damp cave. There were strange chalk drawings of spiny plants, a representation of the automaton they fought in Khonnir Baine’s home, and emaciated four-armed humanoids marking the walls. They searched the rubble and Bellatrix recovered seven silverdisks, a silk rope, a backpack, and some thieves’ tools. The android believed they were his progenitors, so they allowed him to take everything but the silverdisks.

They took the left hand fork and soon arrived in a vast chamber, standing on a five-foot-wide ledge ten feet above the floor. Four huts made of strips of metal, hides, and fibrous plant matter sat in the cave just north of a dark pit. As they took all this in, a skulk stepped out from the wall next to them and offered to escort half the group to meet their chieftain and hopefully come to an accord.

The party agreed and Victoria, Bellatrix, and the android followed the skulk to a cave filled with metal junk rising up in a heaplike hut to the northwest. There they met Sef, the chieftain of the skulks. She explained to the party that she and her tribe had been terribly hurt by the fifth expedition, and she was willing to negotiate safe passage through their caves and would give them a technological prize on two conditions: that they left the skulks unmolested and get rid of a nest of jinkin gremlins to the northeast.

The party agreed and the android asked if there was anything they had to help with healing wounds. Sef was willing to sell two cure moderate wounds potions to them if they wished. They also talked about any information the skulks could give on what they might face. A first group came through a month before, consisting mainly of orcs and ratfolk led by a violet haired woman. There was also a green haired man with them. They negotiated with Sef’s predecessor to defend the entrance for a significant payment. This worked well at first, but Khonnir Baine’s first expedition killed that chieftain and decimated their numbers, so they have been avoiding challenging any expeditions since.

After completing their trades they rejoined Aedann, Eduard, and Dugald. They proceeded into the caves northeast of the skulk huts and began hunting gremlins. In spite of being aware that the little pests were there, they got taken by surprise. The android and Bellatrix recognized the threat and Bellatrix took one out with a dart through the forehead, causing the other two gremlins to begin laughing uproariously over it. The android speared one with his rapier, but did no damage as the seemed to be resistant to non-magic weapons.

Hunting out the gremlins then proved to be a royal pain, and even required Bellatrix to disarm some spring-loaded spike traps the gremlins had set up. The cramped tunnels forced the party to squeeze together, interfering with each other’s attacks. They took some damage from the gremlins, with the android, Bellatrix, and Eduard taking significant damage. Eduard even fell unconscious from a deadly strike and had to be aided by the android to keep from dying. Smeared and split gremlins appeared whenever Aedann and Dugold got a solid hit, however. The android was able to recover his progenitor’s discarded leather armor which was being used a nest/toilet by the gremlins.

They moved on into a final cavern with several passageways exiting from a narrow ledge overlooking a rubble-filled floor. The far wall was made of a smooth, dark gray metal. A single closed circular door, sat on the metal wall just above the rubble. They were attacked by yet another jinkin gremlin, but he proved incredibly difficult to hit. When he did take damage, he finally decided to flee and gave the party the victory. They found the android’s progenitor’s bow and then they returned to Sef. She thanked them and gave them a sack with forty-nine silverdisks and five strange cards made of a flexible, smooth material. These five cards each had a brown stripe. The android had a strike of inspiration and recognized them as access cards, sort of high-tech keys.

Running out of time on the water breathing, they headed back to the cave entrance and picked up Parda Garr’s body. Aedann used his lungs as a bellows and acted as an air supply for the android to get him out without the water breathing effect. It worked, but the android took in some water before they got out to air. Bellatrix got sickened by the water for a minute after leaving. The android had strange lines glow blue on his body afterwards and had no ill effects from the water.

[Monrail]

Nice start here, looking forward to more. Just one question: Who is Huginn? Is he Victoria's familiar? The name pops up somewhere in the middle without having been mentioned before.

[Feros]

Monrail wrote:

Nice start here, looking forward to more. Just one question: Who is Huginn? Is he Victoria's familiar? The name pops up somewhere in the middle without having been mentioned before.

Yeah, I missed that. Huginn is, in fact, Victoria's raven familiar and her Jiminy Cricket like conscience.

[Feros]

Session 2 (part one):

It was late afternoon and the party made the decision to spend some of the currency they had acquired in picking up some wands to help with healing wounded party members as they had used up most of the potions they acquired. They picked some clothes and arrows from the general store for the android before going to the Temple of Brigh where Joram Kyte was delighted to see them. He sold them a wand of cure light wounds but was fascinated with the android, questioning him on how he managed to renew from violence. As the android had no knowledge, Kyte was left disappointed but still fascinated by what had occurred.

The return of Parda Garr’s body was well received, although it saddened the people of Torch. The townspeople had expected it, but it was a blow to them nonetheless. The fate of the first and second expeditions weighed heavily on the town and fears for Khonnir grew.

They then headed back to the Foundry to rest for the night and get ready to set out again the next day. Val was amazed to see the android they rescued and asked him many questions about whether he had seen her father down there. When she found he had flashes of memory, she brought out a book that had been slashed and damaged to see if he recognized it. He had a flash and realized that it was his progenitor’s formula book. He must have been an alchemist. He thanked Val for the book and had the wizards use mending to repair the damage and help him prepare extracts.

Val then asked the android his name, and he responded that he was considering Isaac. The group agreed to call him that and they decided to heal up before resting. After all preparations were done, it was early afternoon of the next day. Kyte warned them with five of them being under the effects of water breathing, they only would have four and a half hours before they have to leave.

They cracked another sunrod and proceeded to the skulk community. There they asked about the one last corridor before the skulk settlement and what was down there. They responded that there was a dangerous mold and one of Khonnir’s expedition was down there. They decided to let Isaac and Aedann investigate to avoid any diseases that might be there.

The whole party came to the ledge descending into the cavern, the temperature dropping noticeably. A light layer of brown dust carpeted the cave floor and a body sat slumped against the eastern wall. Isaac and Aedann descended a knotted rope into the room. Isaac immediately passed out from the cold. They hauled him out and Victoria recognized the dust as brown mold, a dangerous substance that absorbs heat.

Aedann proceeded to the body, finding a male human that was cold but not frozen. He brought the body back to the ledge and they hauled it up. Bellatrix noticed some strange ribbons and filaments of rust-colored fibers growing along his spine, throat, and chest. Victoria recognized it as an infestation of russet mold, an infection that would eventually cause the body to explode forth a pair of vegepygmies.

Victoria recognized the body as Gerrol Sonder of Khonnir’s expedition and remembered the popular rogue recently asked a weaponsmith’s daughter named Emelia Otterbie to marry him. They decided to bring the body back to Emelia, but they debated how to return him without him becoming vegepymies. They decided to leave it in the cold, then use acid splash cantrips to clean up the infestation before returning the body. They took his gear for themselves.

They then proceeded to the metal wall opposite the skulk community. They found an open circular portal leading to a slightly curved hallway made of smooth dark gray metal. Panels of lighter material ran along the ceiling above. To the north and south the tunnel was blocked by walls of metal junk and rubble, with open doorways to the east and west.

As they entered the next section, another automaton like the one they fought at Khonnir’s house rose up and attacked. Dugald charged in and hit the robot which promptly fired off a net and entangled the dwarf. It then slammed Dugald heavily, but Isaac used the wand and healed him promptly. Finally Bellatrix and Aedann combined strikes to finish off the mechanical beast.

The northern wall of the next room was a tangle of strange cages of some sort with ancient bones of an alien creature. Smaller mounds of rubble lay against the opposite wall. Another door led out, but unlike the others it was closed. They found another closed door to the south. They searched the room and Bellatrix found a set of gripping tools, a black marked technological device (that Isaac identified as an electronic lock pick), and two powered silverdisks (batteries).

They forced the door and found a chamber filled with rubble. The other main door got forced and they found a small chamber with two strange machines to the north and south against the walls with several nozzle-like protrusions pointing into the room itself. Another closed door was opposite. After searching it they forced the far door and it led to a short stone tunnel that curved north before opening into a vast sand-filled cavern.

Purple tentacles suddenly emerged from a white, coral-like rock formation, tracing whirled patterns in the surrounding sand. The creature missed in its initial strikes then Isaac fired his bow at the creature. Bellatrix missed, Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement—sapping its strength—and then Aedann and Dugald struck hard. Its tentacles were unable to do much damage do its sapped strength but it did hit Dugald while Isaac healed him up. Aedann then killed it with a final massive blow.

They proceeded down the tunnel into a cold cavern that looked like a desert valley under a starless, night sky. A stretch of sand covered the ground, broken in places by bits of spiky shells or dead fronds that look like branches. Dugald and Aedann asked to have the sunrod covered and they used their darkvision to see how far up the roof was. They saw the cliff went up fifty feet to a domed ceiling. The top of the dome was far beyond their sight.

There was a trail out into the dust, they followed the trail. As they proceeded, a pair of strange, four armed skeletons emerged from the dust and attacked them. One hit Isaac, but Aedann and Dugald destroyed them shortly. They proceeded on the trail and were attacked again by three more skeletons, this time Bellatrix and Eduard were hit. Bellatrix tumbled into position to flank one as Victoria took command of one of the skeletons. It then attacked the other skeleton next to her.

Aedann destroyed the other skeleton and they proceeded with the last skeleton in tow. Dugold smashed one while Victoria ordered her skeleton to grapple another and she then hit one with a disrupt undead, destroying it. Dugald destroyed another and Aedann wiped out the one grappled by their skeleton. Their time was running down, so they smashed the last skeleton and headed out.

It was early evening when they got back to base. After arriving at the Foundry, a nervous-looking courier delivered a message to the party: an invitation to come visit Torch’s “illustrious tavern and card room,” Silverdisk Hall. The invitation was from the hall’s owner, Garmen Ulreth, and included certificates for each of them worth 100 gp for use in gambling and entertainment at his establishment, redeemable anytime during the next week.

Victoria, Dugold, and Bellatrix knew that Garmen has great influence in town from the fact that so many people owe him money. He was also connected to the Ropefists, the local thieves guild, though how high up in their organization he actually is has been subject to debate. Bellatrix, Eduard, Isaac, and Victoria decided to accept the invitation and go for the evening.

As they arrived, Garmen greeted them himself—he was a garrulous man with a full beard and sparkling eyes. He hit on Victoria a bit before wishing them luck, both in the caves below Black Hill and in Silverdisk Hall, then excusing himself to take care of some urgent business. They began playing some card and dice games, while Eduard played some card tricks/games to get some money off rubes…make that “entertained guests.”

They played for a bit until they lost a bit of their fronted money and Bellatrix helped out someone down on their luck through cheating on his behalf. Eduard made good money before being asked politely to leave.

The next day they proceeded back in and they ran smack into two more of the skeletons. They defeated them and proceeded across the chamber, fighting waves of skeletons as they proceeded. This time they made it to the far wall and following the path they found another tunnel into the cliff face. The tunnel appeared to dead end, but there was a light source coming from somewhere. Eduard recognized an illusion of some sort was filling the end of the tunnel. He walked through the illusion and found one of the circular doors slightly open with a light source coming out.

Bellatrix and Isaac slipped into the room and opened the door with a control on the wall. They found that it had the same devices on the walls that the chamber off the first tunnel had, but these were malfunctioning. Isaac tried to disable them but an electrical discharge filled the room, injuring them. The device continued to issue blasts every now and then, but they decided to leave it and just pass through. They opened the opposite door and then proceeded down the hall to another door which they were able to open with of the brown stripe cards.

There they found a room with many strange devices. The room buzzed and hummed with energy. Strips of glowing rectangles lit the room from above, with flickering windows on the east and west walls. A large glass-topped circular table sat in the middle of the room and to the north was a large metal desk covered with blinking lights, with a humming pillar of purple-and-black metal standing nearby, its sides flashing with violet energy. A golden panel flashed with a soft light on the side of the pillar. A thick layer of dust coated everything.

They determined from the dust that some people had passed through here recently but didn’t do anything. Isaac determined through reading the Androffan markings that the room was in standby mode and could activate the machinery by pushing a single button. The whole room was dedicated to “habitat control”, whatever that meant.

They argued whether they should push the button or not. The two wizards urged pushing the button, Bellatrix was opposed, the fighters were ambivalent, and Huginn—as a raven—decided that the lights were shiny and that he should push the button. Isaac shrugged and pushed the button. A series of muffled clicking and buzzing sounds echoed through the walls, and a moment later the circular table in this room flared to light, providing an image of the vast desert chamber on its surface. Numerous panels on the wall fill with static and the pillar of purple metal flashed and began to pulsate.

They went down a curved hallway with two other doors. They went to the east door and opened it onto another corridor curving north and south away from them. They backed up and checked out the second door in the first corridor and found a large chamber.

A large metal table was surrounded by chairs and to the west what appeared to be a transparent wall looked out over the strange desert valley of the vast chamber. The ceiling now had the appearance of a strangely red sky with gray clouds and a red sun. Four pillars supported the fifteen foot- high ceiling, while dozens of crude images of a pickaxe made of a skull and bones had been painted onto the walls with ivory pigment along with several phrases in an unrecognizable language.

Suddenly a figure charged at Isaac from where it had been hiding behind a pillar and hit him hard. He looked like one of the four-armed skeletons, but with flesh on its bones; even so, it was still undead. Aedann moved in and struck the creature while Isaac withdrew. It began slamming into Aedann and Dugold. They moved around to help Bellatrix get a flank as Eduard and Victoria fired their crossbows. Aedann finally took it down with a powerful slash slicing it in two.

[Feros]

Session 2 (part two):

After looting the body and searching the room, they found a black striped access card. The writing proved to be entirely incomprehensible, so they moved on. They went back out into the long curved corridor and headed north, finding another circular door. It opened with their black access card and revealed a corridor leading to another door.

They opened it and found a room with a large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels sitting atop a raised area on the east side of this room near a circular table. Two couches covered with black material sat to the south of a pair of black metal pillars. Splatters of dried blood were on the floor and walls near a pair of doors to the north. The room itself is brightly lit by glowing panels on the ceiling.

There was mold on the south wall but it turned out to be relatively safe. Isaac determined the blood was about five days old. The desk had some panels on which garbled lines of scrambled Androffan text or images of strange creatures flashed briefly. They decided to open the door covered in blood and follow the blood trail. Bloodstains covered the floor and walls of the hallway, with scorch marks on the walls evidence of a fight. Four tangled mounds of metal and other materials lay further up the hall.

They began following the bloodstained hallway until it ended in two doors, one east and one south. The blood trail led through the eastern door, so they proceeded that way. They opened the door and found a room with a long table with unusual stones and dirt samples heaped on it along the southern wall. The north had metal desks with glowing panels and buttons next to a large humming device. At the heart of this device was a flickering sphere of reddish-brown mud or dirt. Dust covered much of the room, save for a strangely clean swath between the doors, which led to the strange humming device.

Isaac took a look at the workstations on the north and after a few minutes of work were used to catalog and research various geological topics, making this a geology lab. He also determined that the bulk of the most recent samples came from a planet referred to both as “CX-335” and as “Kasath”. The planet itself was described as an arid world with little water, violent weather patterns, and savage inhabitants of a predominantly hexapodous nature, thus revealing the undead denizens of the desert chamber as being kasathas. He also learned that the habitat dome area was built specifically to mimic life on the surface of Kasath.

As he finished his initial work a voice spoke into their minds, asking “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” and “What is this place?” The party began trying to answer, but whatever it was didn’t seem to know much about itself, or what was going on. They narrowed down to a purple fungus growth in the center of the flickering sphere device. When asked about seeing anyone else, it mentioned that it did see some creatures like them pass through the room and out the other door.

It confessed to have come out and licked up the “red food” they left. It asked for more red food. They began suggesting entering the hall, but it began to make a low moaning sound before it left the box and attacked them. It unleashed a piercing shriek, causing nausea in Huginn, Dugold, and Bellatrix, taking them out of the fight. Then it left the device and lunged forward to attack Victoria, rending her unconscious.

Eduard was confused by a broadcast of strange thoughts that burst from the cerebric fungus, making it difficult for him to concentrate. Isaac used the healing wand to get Victoria back in the fight, while Eduard fired off his crossbow. Victoria hit the fungus with an acid splash while it moved to attack Victoria again.

Isaac healed Victoria again as Aedann hit it with his greatsword and Eduard missed with his distracted mind. Victoria hit it with her grave touch and fatigued it as it damaged her with its tendrils again. Aedann finally killed it with his sword before it could devour Victoria.

After searching the room they found three devices that Isaac determined were disposable flare guns. Leaving through the room they resumed following the blood trail down and hall and into another chamber. Metal desks sat to the north and south and a pair of odd, bedlike tables flanked by curving panels of blinking lights. Moving armatures of metal extended over the beds outfitted with glowing panes of glass and glowing tools. The chamber reeked of blood, with stains splashed across the device, beds, and floor.

A white robot moved to attack as soon as the door was opened. It stated in Androffan “Please remain calm; you are to undergo a medical procedure,” as it charged. Bellatrix hit it with a dart in a critical area, causing it to vibrate on the spot. Victoria threw an acid splash on it as Aedann charged and struck. Eduard fired his crossbow and Isaac his bow. Dugold charged in but failed to damage the device with his earthbreaker. Bellatrix moved into the room and missed with her dart.

It attacked Dugold stating “The doctor will be with you shortly,” injecting anesthetic as it clawed at him. Dugold’s dwarven endurance preserved him from the effects. Aedann and Dugold coordinated their strikes to maximize their damage, smashing the malfunctioning device. However the two of them were attacked by the arms attached to the beds. A beam of fire cut into Aedann slicing while a frightening metallic sound came from the machinery.

They left the room and Isaac walked into the room and turned off the medical stations. Aedann proceeded to take the room apart in a rage. They searched the debris, but found nothing of value. The corridor away from the malfunctioning medlab had two doors opposite each other at the eastern end. They opened the north one with a brown card and found a room with two circular metal tables and several chairs. Metal cabinets sat against the walls, and to the north stood a large machine with glowing panels on its surface. The air in this room was unusually warm.

They found a large amount of goo in tubes. Isaac did an alchemical analysis and determined it to be food rations in paste form. One hundred and twenty goo tubes were there, and they decided to take them with them to see if any were still good. The next door in that chamber was a north-south corridor leading back to the blood hallway to the north.

Time running short, they decided to check out the room on the south of the room with the goo tubes. They found a room with hat appeared to be a series of chamber pots with water separated by stalls. Pulling a switch flushed water down away from them. There was a sink with flowing water. Bellatrix turned some of the knobs in a final stall with some sort of spout on the wall and got showered in water.

Out of time, they headed back out to pick up Gerrol’s body and depart the caves. Applying the acid splash spells to Gerrol and then let Victoria repair his corpse got him ready for return to his fiancée. Emelia Otterbie was grief stricken, but grateful to the party. Emelia got her father to craft a new masterwork weapon for each of them. These gifts would take a month to create, and Dugold asked that Otterbie work on his earthbreaker—which he had named “Valerie”—whenever he was out of the caves and hopefully get it to masterwork quality.

They traded in the gear they didn’t want for cash and purchased an inflict light wounds wand for use with Aedann as well as punching up their gear. Isaac’s inspection of the goo tubes determined that sixty of them were still good for use.

That evening Victoria, Aedann, Bellatrix, Isaac, and Eduard went back to the Silverdisk Hall. Eduard once more was asked to leave after winning more cash off the customers and Bellatrix found the man she helped was back again. She did her best to get him out but resigned herself to realizing he was on his own. Aedann blew all of his money on a single spin of a roulette wheel. Isaac and Victoria lost money on blackjack and craps.

They returned to the caves the next day and this time explored the desert valley. They found a network of caves which still featured old remnants of crude palates, tools, and weapons left behind by a primitive hunter-gatherer society and cave paintings on the walls depicted four-armed humanoids in various acts of hunting strange desert creatures. They progressed through the caves to a large chamber with several shell fragments and bits of bone lying scattered across the floor. Ancient cave paintings of four-armed humanoids and strange animals decorated the walls. The south had a depiction that looked like an oblong shape burning in the sky above several kneeling four-armed figures.

As they explored the cave, they were attacked by another of the purple tentacle creatures that they encountered when they first entered this place. It grabbed Dugold, with tendrils still attached to the dwarf after the strike which began sucking his blood. Dugold charged in and got hit by more tentacles. Isaac used the cure wand on Dugold as Aedann charged in and missed. Bellatrix moved into flanking as Eduard fired off bolts as Victoria tried to use acid splash spells.

Dugold and Aedann continued to hammer away at the monster while Isaac used the cure wand on Dugold. The sands around the monster began to shift, making Bellatrix, Dugold, and Aedann work to avoid becoming trapped. Aedann finally killed the beast with a last blow.

After the battle, they searched the scattered remains on which the monster slumbered and found a necklace made of amber-trapped insects of no recognizable species in surprisingly good shape. They determined it to be a swarmbane clasp.

They headed back to the entryway into the place where the medical bay was, and tested the locked door there. It contained several upright lockers, most of which contained pieces of junk and rubble. They searched all five lockers and found a fully functional bullseye sunrod (flashlight), three batteries, and twenty silverdisks.

They also found a locked security bin with a white labeled panel. Attempts to pick the lock failed, so they left it for the present. They then went through the doors behind that desk and they found a corridor that led to a unlit twenty foot diameter room with doors at each of the compass points. It was empty save for a panel of controls on the wall to the northwest. A coil of tubes dangling from the left side of the panel periodically flashed with sparks, while a single square window on the panel blinks with several lines of Androffan.

Isaac translated the words as “Deck 4: Engineering,” “Deck 3: Science,” “Deck 2: Crew,” “Deck 1: Docking,” and “WARNING: Elevator off-line—please contact maintenance!” The line titled “WARNING” was flashing in red, while the line titled “Deck 3” was bright blue; the other three lines were faint blue. Isaac deducted that they were in some form of automatic lift called an elevator, and that they were on the “science” deck. Victoria remembered that science is a term for research based on natural philosophy and logic.

The floor was solid, but the area above the room appeared to be hollow. They decided to leave the elevator for the time being and headed north. They found another chamber opposite the room where they found the goo tubes and this chamber contained many desks, tables, and chairs near a number of broken pieces of equipment and machinery. Dried residue of liquids spilled from smashed containers created a heavy stench in the air. Isaac stated it looked like a smashed up alchemical lab.

The party stepped into the room and four small blobs like taut pustule ready to burst scuttled towards the party on a bristle of slick hairs. Isaac identified them as boilborn, oozes born of death and chemicals, and they were disease carriers that would burst when killed. Isaac used the inflict light wounds wand on Aedann to repair damage on him, then they shut the door behind him to take advantage of his immunity to disease.

Aedann cleaved through one ooze and killed a second, getting splashed by acid. The boilborn slammed into him, doing little damage. He killed another and cleaved through into another. He then killed the last two with a flourish, but was badly acid damaged. Bellatrix used prestidigitation to clean Aedann up as Isaac used multiple hits from the inflict wand to heal him. They searched the room, but found nothing of value remaining.

They went back to the room with the goo tubes and checked over the table with the glowing red disks. The found them very hot, hot enough to cook food. They played around with some buttons and found they could adjust the heat or turn the heat on and off.

They decided to check the last room next to the medical area before exploring the southern sections of the deck. They opened the doors and found a long well-lit chamber with a row of beds along the southern wall. Glowing screens and metal desks sat on the opposite walls, and splatters of blood adorn the floor and several of the beds. To the east, a large metal device that is the size of a large bed hummed softly.

Two robots hummed to life—one medical and the other flying—and moved to attack. There were muffled sounds of screams and feeble thumping from within the large metal device. The flying one zapped Aedann with a device that had no apparent effect. Isaac shot the medical drone as Dugold moved in to fight. Bellatrix went in to inspect the device with the screams and found it locked tight.

The medical robot moved forward and injected Dugold while Victoria threw a acid splash into it and Eduard shot it with his crossbow. Aedann was grabbed by the flying robot as Isaac healed Dugold. Dugold smashed the medical robot into bits as Bellatrix kept working on the device. Aedann escaped the grapple then was attacked by the flying robot. Isaac hit the robot with an arrow and Dugold smashed it again. Bellatrix found that she needed a black access card to open it.

The robot tried to stun Dugold while attacking Aedann and then Bellatrix got the card and she unlocked the machine. When she opened it, Khonnir Baine collapsed out of the chamber in pain, babbling incoherently. Eduard and Aedann then hit the robot and smashed it completely. Isaac used the wand to heal Khonnir, but it wasn’t enough to fully restore his mind or his body.

A search of the desks against the north wall uncovered several technological devices—including a timeworn beeping device, a medical injection device, a timeworn brown nanite hypogun, two nanite canisters, and two doses of grade I hemochem. They took these items and Khonnir and headed out of the caves.

[Feros]

Session 3:

After arriving back in Torch, they promptly took Khonnir to the temple to see if Joram Kyte could heal the damage to his brain. Joram was overjoyed to see his friend alive and was able to temporarily restore his mind. Khonnir thanked the party for saving him and told them of the fate of the fifth expedition. They had done well—defeating the undead kasathas and getting beyond them to fight vegepygmies—until they encountered the robots on the science deck. There they met their match, with his compatriots killed and himself captured.

After this he began to degrade again, slowly losing the ability to speak. Khonnir mentioned that he was injected with a serum that was causing him pain before losing his speech. Joram was confused and unable to determine what was wrong with Khonnir. Isaac was able to determine that the wizard was being damaged by nanites trying to map out his brain.

Joram tried using a remove disease, but struggled with it as it was very difficult to remove. Thinking about possible solutions, Isaac realized that the devices in the chambers into the desert were sterilization airlocks. If Joram proved unable to heal Khonnir, the party could take the wizard back to the working airlock and heal him with that device.

The party then went to the town hall and spoke with Dolga Freddert to get their reward, 6000 gp and a scroll of resurrection. They then shopped for additional gear and told Val the good news about her father. They began studying the technological devices they removed from the caves and began working on the gear. They managed to open the white sealed box and found a number of grenades and weapons.

Most of the gear they decided to sell off and this drew the attention of Sanvil Trett, a noted trader of technological devices in the town. He offered them a small percentage higher than other potential buyers and promised them the same again for any devices they might wish to part with. He also promised them any aid in identifying devices should he become their exclusive tech trader.

With the extra money, Isaac purchased some anti-plague to help Joram with the healing of Khonnir. They rested for the night and then set out for the caves the next day. They returned to the science deck and explored the hall going to the elevator and the halls beyond. They found an access corridor that led to a series of single doors. Isaac heard movement through foliage and a low humming sound through the first door.

Aedann entered first, revealing a room which was unusually warm and moist. Condensation ran down the walls along with thick-stemmed plants and vines growing out of long earth-filled troughs along the wall. A tall column of plant matter extended like a tree trunk from a circular planter in the middle of the room, spreading a network of vines across the ceiling. Eight vegepygmies emerged from the foliage to attack.

Three of them headed out a side door while five moved in and attacked him with spears. Aedann stepped in and killed three with mighty strikes. The others moved into position as the other three circled around behind and attacked Bellatrix, Eduard, and Victoria from behind. Isaac moved into the side hall to try and avoid damage and still reach people to heal the party as needed. Dugald killed another as Victoria attacked with an acid splash.

Between Dugald and Aedann, the remaining vegepygmies were soon eliminated. Isaac and Bellatrix searched the room, but found nothing but vegetation. Isaac, Aedann, and Dugald went out into the hall and opened up another door, finding six more vegepygmies—one holding a glowing hammer—surrounded by brackish water. Isaac fled out through another door in the hallway and found a long wide hall going north with an open door to the south, he headed north as that was the way the vegepygmies must have gone when they came around behind them.

The vegepygmies moved through the party and a number of them were killed. Victoria cast grasping corpse on a dead vegepygmy and caused it to grapple another one trying to get by. Two of the vegepygmies followed Isaac out into the hallway to attack the android as he backed away and attempted to get distance.

Bellatrix went through the first vegetation room and opened the door the others circled around from and found a dark chamber with a thick blanket of fungal matter coating the floor. Several chairs sat before work tables containing unusual tools and equipment, while a row of doors lined the southern wall. Two large flowers began to move and attack, so Bellatrix fled and shut the door. The door into the hallway was open, so they began moving towards Isaac in the hall.

The smell of the flowers was so overpowering Eduard and sickening him. The two flowers—weedwhips—moved out into the hall and attacked Isaac with their tendrils, poisoning him. The chieftain gave up trying to hit Aedann and scratched Eduard instead. Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement on the vegepygmy chieftain, significantly reducing his threat. Dugald stepped out into the hall and killed another vegepygmy to save Isaac. After taking a few more hits from Aedann and Bellatrix, the chieftain surrendered in undercommon. His last surviving follower surrendered as well.

Dugald stepped towards the weedwhips and flatten one with a single strike. Aedann joined him and they proceeded to destroy the last plant. The surrendered vegepygmies left their treasure—including his magic light hammer—and they fled to the darklands. The party searched the rooms in which the weedwhips and vegepygmies were located.

Through the south doors of the weedwhip room they found four bodies, each had been used to explode vegepygmies into existence. They determined that they were the remains of the fourth expedition from the silver holy symbols of Brigh that each carried. After looting the bodies, they determined that they had successfully searched the entire deck, so they went to the elevator to see if they could get the advanced lift working.

Bellatrix and Isaac soon determined that the device could be repaired fairly easily by repairing a coupling in a forge and replacing it. Bellatrix removed the coupling and avoided a nasty shock when by being very quick about it. They then departed for Torch to see how she got on repairing it and how Khonnir was doing.

They talked to Joram and found that he had yet to succeed with Khonnir, but he would try again the next day. The party decided that since Bellatrix would be taking all day to reforge the coupling, they would let the cleric try one last time before taking Khonnir to the sterilization unit and seeing if they could get that to work.

The rest of the party went while Bellatrix worked all day at the Foundry forge assisted by Eduard. Isaac worked out the method to use the sterilization chamber and purged Khonnir of all damaging nanites. They then headed back to get the wizard fully healed.

Bellatrix failed on her first attempt to repair the coupling, so she started anew before the party got back. As she prepared to start over, Val came in and reported seeing Sanvil Trett sneaking out of the tavern. When the party returned, they investigated their stash of party material and found the lock box, a brown stripe access card, a radiation detector, and some goo tubes were missing.

Isaac, Victoria, Dugald, and Aedann went to the Evercandle, the local inn, to confront Trett in his room. The assistant proprietor confirmed that Trett was indeed upstairs and allowed the local heroes to go up and talk to the man. Isaac knocked on the locked door but Trett responded that he was coming, but Isaac heard murmurs through the door and he realised he was hearing was spell casting.

Isaac stepped aside and let Dugald open the door with his earthbreaker with a single blow. They met Sanvil Trett with his sword drawn. Isaac shot an arrow as Trett cast mirror image and suddenly there were six of him in the room. Victoria cast acid splash and eliminated one of the illusions. Dugald and Aedann moved in and eliminated two more images with their strikes as Isaac took out a fourth with an arrow. Trett cast corrosive touch on his sword and struck Dugald for some serious damage. Aedann successfully hit Trett, keeping the last image intact. Isaac used the cure light wounds wand on Dugald but Trett struck the dwarf again with a chill touch on his sword, draining energy from the warrior.

Dugald then managed to hit Trett with a massive overhand critical strike from his earthbreaker Valerie and drove Trett’s skull into the floor boards. Soceal Murgrave, the innkeeper, came storming up and demanded to know what they had done. Isaac stated that Trett had stolen from them and the party would pay for damages. 100 gp later the inn staff was ready to back their story to any and all authorities.

They looted the place and recovered not only their stolen gear, but the gear they sold Trett as well. Isaac also found something disturbing: a Technic League pin. Apparently Sanvil Trett was a member of the hated ruling organization of Numeria. Further investigation of the room found some papers that indicated the he was investigating the loss of the purple flame as well. He had listed a number of people of interest which he had dismissed as his investigation had gone on. Only one name remained: Garmen Ulreth, the proprietor of Silverdisk Hall. Beside his name was written “Warehouse?”

[Feros]

Session 4:

After answering the questions of the local militia, they decided not to reveal Trett’s association with the Technic League. They decided to stake out Trett’s warehouse to discover the connection between Garmen Ulreth and the group who extinguished the flame. Eduard used disguise self to make himself nondescript and cast invisibility on Bellatrix, then they walked past the warehouse in the early evening. Bellatrix noticed a member of the Ropefist gang leave the boarded up warehouse through a door, locking it behind him. The boards apparently were only for show.

Bellatrix crept up to the building and listened at the office level, hearing some idle gossip and talk of possible blackmail and extortion of people who owed Ulreth money. After reporting back to the party at the Foundry, they decided to have Isaac and Bellatrix position themselves in an alley opposite the warehouse to determine the schedule of entries and departures of Ropefist thugs and Ulreth himself. They spent the rest of the night into the morning observing the building and realized that the number of thugs was lowest when Garmen was there himself. They had to decide whether they wanted to confront him or not when they went inside.

About midmorning on Arodus 14th, they decided to move while Ulreth was inside. They went up the outer stairs to a door into the office from the rear. Isaac inspected the door and listened, hearing a single person eating a meal in the office. Isaac picked the lock then let Dugald up to the front to open the door. The office was descended into from their position via a set of stairs that descended into the room. Garmen Ulreth looked quite startled and stood up from his meal to call for the guards.

There were many footsteps and doors opened to reveal nine Ropefist thugs coming into the office and onto the walkway. Victoria cast an acid splash and managed to hit Ulreth as he unsuccessfully tried to shoot Dugald with his hand crossbow. Aedann moved down the stairs and to the floor and took out two of the thugs with one swing of his greatsword. The Ropefists tried to move in position to strike from flanking positions and began to bash the dwarf and geiswicht. Dugald moved in and cleared up the area on the walkway for the unarmoured party members as Eduard filled an area with glitterdust.

Bellatrix managed to hit Ulreth with a dart, causing him to swear and drink a potion causing him to vanish. Victoria cast grasping corpse on one of the dead Ropefist thugs, getting it to grab hold of one of the active Ropefists that was flanking Aedann. Isaac ran down the stairs and moved to the alley door outside to avoid the scrum on the stairs. Aedann killed the grabbed thug and missed another, remaining flanked. Two of the glittered thugs struck Eduard with sling stones to try and take down a spell caster, but failed to do enough damage.

Bellatrix flipped over the railing and down into the room to stab the grabbed thug from a flank. Then Garmen Ulreth appeared flanking Aedann from atop a table and nearly took down the warrior with a critical strike from his rapier. Dugald began trying to fight his way through to help Aedann. Eduard cast color spray on three thugs that he was able to get without hitting the rest of the group. Two thugs immediately succumbed and fell unconscious. Victoria moved in and cast repair undead on Aedann, leaning over the railing of the stairs to slap him on the head.

Isaac unlocked the door as Aedann took down more thugs and cleaved into Ulreth. Ulreth feinted Aedann, but was unable to exploit the drop in the fighter’s defences. Dugald finally got to Aedann’s side, and hit Ulreth with his earth breaker Valerie, killing the crimelord. Isaac then opened the door to find the combat was over.

After entering the room, Isaac used the wand of inflict light wounds to help heal Aedann and the wand of cure light wounds on the group. They searched the bodies and office to get loot. They found a small box in a hidden compartment filled with fifty silverdisks before moving into the warehouse. They heard a strange humming sound which Isaac was able to track to its source, a crate in the very middle of the warehouse.

After searching for traps, Isaac popped open the crate and found a device with screens and buttons, a concave dish sitting on top. It was thrumming loudly and Isaac read power readings and directional coordinates on the screens. After some careful study, Isaac was able to figure out that it was relaying power from inside the hill to some location to the northeast of Torch. Bellatrix then determined how to shut it down and did so to see what would happen. The low pain in the back of everyone’s heads that was causing the headaches immediately stopped.

The rest of the warehouse held nothing but empty boxes. They then questioned the two surviving Ropefist thugs who had been subdued with a color spray spell. Aedann intimidated the thugs into being cooperative, and they learned that the power relay was some sort of magic item that the thugs assumed Garmen was holding onto until he could find a buyer. They told them that the device arrived two days before the torch went out.

They let the thugs go and discussed what to do next. They decided to rest and go back into the caves that evening, as their shutting down the power relay probably alerted the people responsible for shutting down the flame that something was wrong—the party would want to act before a response was mounted against Torch.

They headed back in all the way to the broken elevator. Bellatrix repaired the elevator and they hit the button for Engineering Deck 4. The elevator lurched and headed up. The doors opened up onto a hemispherical room filled with an animal stench. There were curved ramps leading up to hallways out of the room, while several doors sat in the east wall. Flickering lights were on the ceiling and the metal walls were damaged in places. Four mounds of rubble, cloth, and bones lay about the room. The area thrummed with a low thundering sound.

As Dugald and Aedann stepped out into the chamber, high pitched howls and growls came from six cat like creatures that then attacked. Isaac identified them as thylacines, rare primitive marsupials native to Golarion. Aedann let them come to him and then killed three of them with a single swipe. Aedann and Dugald took care of them quickly, then began to explore.

They found the southern hallway ended quickly in rubble, while the northern one headed off into the dark a far way. They decided to leave that hallway for later exploration and concentrate on the doors on the east wall. They opened the northern most door and revealed a battered chamber with flickering lights on the ceiling. A mound of rubble sat heaped to the north, while numerous containers lay in piles throughout the chamber. A pair of desks with chairs were placed to the south. A group of savage looking half-orcs wielding large bits of junk and ratfolk with short swords immediately moved to the attack.

Eduard cast glitterdust on the half-orcs, blinding four of them. Isaac threw a flash grenade and blinded the rest of the half-orcs and all but two of the six ratfolk. Aedann then threw a javelin at one of the half-orcs and wounded him. Dugald charged in to attack, but was swarmed by the ratfolk and half-orcs as he charged. They did some damage, but being mostly blind they’re damage was somewhat muted. Still, it was enough to distract the dwarf and keep him from successfully landing a blow.

Victoria cast acid splash and hit a half-orc at the back while Eduard and Isaac shot at orcs with their bows and Bellatrix moved in to stab a ratfolk in a sneak attack. Aedann then moved in and began slashing through the ratfolk. Dugald continued to struggle in the enclosed space as the half-orcs and ratfolk continued to attempt to flank the others. Aedann moved again and killed more ratfolk, opening up the room to allow Dugald to swing properly and kill the last of the ratfolk.

Victoria and Eduard pulled out of combat as the combat began to wind down, allowing Eduard to see another door opening up and more ratfolk and half-orcs moving to attack from behind. Eduard called out that there were more incoming and then cast color spray on the ratfolk, knocking them all unconscious. Bellatrix moved into a flank with the first group and felled a half-orc. The second group of half-orcs charged over and attacked Eduard and Isaac. Eduard nearly was taken down by a broken pipe wielded by a raging half-orc.

Dugald and Aedann took out more half-orcs from the first group while Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement on one of the second group half-orcs. Eduard shot one of the half-orcs with a bow as Isaac killed one with his rapier. Aedann pulled out of the first combat and attacked the half-orcs of the second group, defending the wizards. Dugald killed the last half-orc of the first group with Bellatrix while Aedann killed off the last half-orcs from the second group. Dugald eliminated the ratfolk that were coming around from the effects of the color spray ending the combat.

Searching the rooms they had entered and found a battered locker that Bellatrix managed to open. They found a grappling hook firing gun, some sort of homing beacon, and a ball of some elastic substance that could encase someone in a protective covering, some batteries, and silverdisks. They explored further and found a chamber that looks like it had been used as a barracks for the ratfolk and half-orcs and had a broken goo-tube dispenser that the party raided for more rations.

They used their brown access cards to follow a hall to the south of the barracks and found a large domed chamber with a balcony winding around it and walls covered in blinking lights and machinery. A few steps led down from this balcony to the middle of the room. Just north of these step sat a large machine with a pink glass tabletop-like surface above which floated semitransparent images of some sort. The balcony was wider on the south side of the stairs where a strange statue stood that seems to have been cobbled together from broken machines into the shape of an upraised claw. A mound of junk lay in a heap before the claw, while two braziers burned on each side. To the east were a pair of massive black metal doors set in a rotating arch of pulsing red lights.

Isaac recognized the claw as being religious in nature and built in reference to a new or fictional god. He got up on the balcony to study the device with the strange imagery. There he found an image of the desert habitat they left and with some fiddling, he found that he could see the shape and some details of the wreck they were in. As Isaac moved to check out the double doors to the west leading back towards the first chamber, he was attacked by a gargoyle wearing metal bits that had been hiding in the rubbish claw.

Isaac simply began to dodge and weave to avoid taking any more damage from the monster as Dugald and Aedann came in to attack. Not having magic weapons reduced the damage considerably. Victoria cast spectral hand as Isaac opened the west doors to see if it would work as an escape route for him. There he found a short hallway with four glowing and flashing nodes attached to the walls on the north and south, each firing off bolts of electricity. He decided not to retreat that way. He pulled out and left Aedann and Dugald to handle the beast, narrowly dodging a claw on his way out.

Aedann and Dugald maneuvered into a flanking position as Victoria used her grave touch ability through her spectral hand on the gargoyle, causing it to become shaken with fear. Isaac healed himself as the warriors began whittling the monster down. Eduard used his blinding ray, but missed as Isaac used the wand of inflict light wounds on the gargoyle. Dugald then hit the gargoyle with an overhand power attack with Valerie and nearly slammed the beast to the ground. This was followed by Aedann with a powerful swing, slicing it in two.

Pissed off, Dugald smashed the claw into piles of rubble. His smashing damaged some good items that were hidden in the rubble, but they were still able to retrieve some usable items. They found lenses that were in now smashed goggles that were still good, a smashed zipstick, some ion tape, and a helmet that Isaac determined could be used for detecting approaching individuals.

They decided to leave the big black doors and headed through some southern doors leading to a room with buzzing with the sound of machinery. A track of moving leather-like material rotated along a metal framework in the middle of the room. The eastern end of this device was connected to a metal machine fitted with thrashing armatures and blinking lights. Panels on the wall flashed with Androffan and images of metallic constructs. To the west a second track of leather—this one smeared with blood—came through an opening in the wall to a room beyond.

Three repair robots noticed the party and moved to the attack. Victoria moved to where she could see one and hit one with an acid splash. Aedann charged one of the robots and cut it in two. The other two moved in and one struck Aedann while the other entangled him in a net. Dugald moved in and began flanking with Aedann as he struck. Eduard, Isaac, and Bellatrix hung back while Victoria cast another acid splash. Aedann slashed through and took out another one while Dugald moved into recreate a flank. Victoria, Aedann, and Dugald combined strikes to bring it to the edge of destruction, with Aedann finishing it off.

Isaac soon determined that the room was a Robotics Lab and that the screens would allow a reboot of robotic systems. This shut down the robots connected to the command center. Aedann and Dugald smashed the machine into little bits to keep any robots connected from coming back to life, as Isaac worked to cause the machine to overload from the inside. It was soon ruined beyond all repair.

[Feros]

Session 5:

The party unlocked the southwestern door from the room and opened it to reveal a room with an immense machine to the south in this room. The device looked like an enormous oven, its front open with a rotating belt of green leathery material connecting to a wide metal table. Metal desks sat to the east, while a second rotating belt of leather moved through an opening in the east wall. Two dead orcs lay at the base of this second belt.

A large humanoid shaped robot wielding what looked to be a large glowing club attacked them as they entered. The robot stated in Androffan, “Intrusion detected. Initiating purge protocol 11-321. Please stand down and submit, intruders. Purge protocol 11-321 demands compliance per core Divinity Directive.”

Eduard used his blinding ray to dazzle the gearsman robot and then Isaac hit it with a flask of alchemist’s fire. Dugald ran in and swept the robot’s feet out from under it, crashing it to the ground. It stood back up and missed striking at the dwarf. Aedann moved in and struck followed by a critical strike from Dugald’s Valerie. The robot was promptly crushed.

They determined that the glowing club had a powered stunning effect, looted the half-orc bodies for gear, and began searching the room. A violet haired woman entered the room with the robot control systems that the party had smashed from the same door they had entered. She declared that they would not succeed and that her lord Hellion would purge the world of humanity and raise androids up to their rightful place. Isaac had a flash of memory of the woman ordering his progenitor’s demise.

Eduard was struck with a blast of light from the female android’s hand and was burned by it. Eduard fled in behind the rest of the party as they entered into the first room. The android cleric invoked Hellion and caused a sound burst that affected the entire group, but they were not stunned by the effect. Isaac hit her with a flask of alchemist’s fire as Victoria followed that with an acid splash. Aedann moved in and hit her hard with his greatsword and then Dugald followed in to be ready to strike.

Dugald got hit with a confusion spell, which caused the rest of the party to flee in an attempt to avoid any problems. Dugald swung at Aedann, but missed wildly. As the android moved to using a glowing pistol, Aedann stepped up and cut her in two. They looted her body for gear and finished searching the gearsman room. They found a white key card in the room and another on the android’s body. They also found an inferno pistol on the android that Isaac claimed.

They finished searching the engineering deck by finding the last door led to a corridor back to the first elevator room. The party then returned to the room where they had fought the gargoyle and approached the big black doors. The doors were locked and required a white card to access the chamber beyond.

There they found a massive machine of metal against the far wall on a ten-foot-high platform in a large chamber. Two cylinders of pulsing violet light were at the machine’s core, while above a thinner cylinder extended through the ceiling. There were ladders to the north and south allowing access to the machine’s platform and at the center a smaller machine with metal spikes protruding from it extended from the larger one. The entire room vibrated with a roar and the air felt as though it were vibrating as well. A deactivated collector robot lay crashed on the floor near some control panels.

Isaac determined that this was the crashed vessel’s power core and the source of Torch’s flame. He found that the fail-safe had been deactivated and the power had been transmitted to a nearby relay—the same one they deactivated in the warehouse. Isaac spent the next twenty minutes working on the controls to reengage the fail-safe purge to keep the reactor from exploding and destroying all of Torch. As he did so, Aedann smashed the deactivated robot into scrap metal.

When the reactor’s fail-safe was reengaged, the two columns of energy flashed with light, then pulsed back upward into the ceiling. Above in the town of Torch a vortex of violet flame erupted into the sky above Black Hill.

The party proceeded to explore the last long corridor and found that it led them back to the doors where they slew the last jinkin gremlin for the skulks. They then left the caves and were welcomed back to Torch with a heroes’ welcome and received the 6000 gp reward for relighting the flame.

After healing up they went to bed to get up in the morning of Arodus 15th, and decided to buy some new gear and try and wait a few weeks to let Otterbie finish the masterwork weapons he promised them. The column of flame burned for 24 hours before returning to its normal bonfire form.

Victoria and Eduard talked to Khonnir Baine about the death of Victoria’s mother Shelen. He dismissed Eduard’s suspicions about the Technic League as the League was never subtle in its assassinations. He didn’t dismiss the idea of her death being a murder, however, as there may have been something else involved. Khonnir revealed that in addition to being an illusionist, Victoria’s mother had been a skilled seer with a true gift for divination magic.

Shelen had come to Khonnir not long before her sudden death and told him of a strange dream-vision she had experienced. She dreamed of a plain of black glass stretching out to infinity. Over the surface of it came three figures: one like an enraged, ferocious, red horned demon; the second looked like a beautiful android woman with long dark hair and glowing eyes with her glowing circuitry forming words against her skin and a troubled look on her face; the third one looked something like a tall robot with four legs, four arms, with a head with a single fiery eye aloof above the other two. She then heard a voice saying, “Beware! For the Iron Gods have risen and they have come.” Shelen had then woke up, not understanding what it all meant. She had the dream one week before her death.

Khonnir hadn’t heard of a god or demigod named Hellion. He was a little disturbed that the android seemed able to summon divine power from this unknown entity. He told them that he had to talk to the town council about this. Isaac began working on the power relay to see if he could figure out where the power was being sent to from Torch as the rest of the party sold off the excess gear and pooled resources for division and new magic item purchases.

When they returned to the Foundry, they met Khonnir who had a proposition for them: the town councillors were fearful that the female android’s lord hadn’t lost interest in Torch and they wanted the party to seek out where she came from and investigate why she was beaming energy out of town in the first place. If Torch was still under threat the council would want to see that threat neutralized. The town offered to pay the party a reward of 12,000 gp if they can ensure that no further threat faced Torch.

Isaac spent the next week going over the power relay to see if he could find where the power was being sent. He confirmed that the device was transmitting power to a specific part of Numeria 105 miles northeast of Torch, and the most significant location in that area was Scrapwall. Determining the specific location in Scrapwall wasn’t possible.

They knew that Scrapwall was a vast sprawl of junk and refuse, long picked clean of most useful bits of salvage and now home to outcasts and exiles. It was ruled by various gangs, the current most powerful being the Lords of Rust. Isaac had a flash of memory that the Lords of Rust were ruled by a powerful force called Hellion, making it certain that Scrapwall was at the heart of their current troubles.

They began preparing for an overland voyage to Scrapwall. They purchased two riding horses for the wizards and a draft horse and waggon for the rest of the party. Once Joram Kyte learned the party was heading to Scrapwall, Torch’s elderly high priest of Brigh contacted them with a personal request. He believed that an old associate of his, a woman named Dinvaya, had taken up residence in Scrapwall after she was forced to flee from the Technic League’s persecution many years ago.

His research has indicated she was not dead, but he hadn’t been able to contact her—he gave the party his personal symbol of Brigh as a token to show Dinvaya in order to help earn her trust. If they were to find her, Joram merely wanted them to let her know that the Technic League’s interest in her had passed and there was a place for her in Torch if she wished to rejoin society. At the very least, Joram wanted confirmation that she was dead or not living in Scrapwall. Joram promised to give the party his lesser rod of extend metamagic as a reward once they complete this mission.

They were ready to depart for Scrapwall on Arodus 29th, and Khonnir came to them as they were preparing to leave. He suggested they head first for a small fort called Aldronard’s Grave. Located on the west bank of the Sellen River directly across from Scrapwall, this fortress was often unoccupied, but if any crusaders or worshipers of Sarenrae were there, they could well have some information about the current situation in Scrapwall to share.

Eduard was familiar with the tale of Aldronard’s Grave as it was a common story told by bards with travelling shows. Aldronard was a devout paladin of Sarenrae in Andoran who traveled north to Mendev to aid in the Second Crusade. He wound up serving in the war for several years, and when the crusade came to an end, Aldronard was eager to return home to marry his beloved, a woman named Justinia. But while stopping over at the fort on his journey south, he received a letter from Justinia’s father, Eredian, informing him that his love had died during an attack on the farm by raiders.

Eredian’s bitter, tersely worded missive made it clear that he blamed Aldronard—both because Justinia had been pining away for him and refused to leave her family home to start a new life, and because Aldronard hadn’t been at the farm to protect her. Unfair as that blame was, it cut Aldronard to the soul; robbed of the only glimmer of hope he had left in what had become an unrelentingly dark time in his life, the paladin lost his faith and committed suicide by leaping from the tallest tower of the riverside chapel where he’d received the fateful letter.

Since then, bad luck has always seemed to plague those who visit the fort, and as the years wore on, many began to report glimpses of a strange and harrowing ghost seen on certain long nights. The fort came to be known as Aldronard’s Grave, and when an unfortunate fire caused the collapse of the wooden interior of the fort’s keep, the church of Sarenrae decided to reduce their presence at the fort to a mere handful of priests and knights who remained largely out of a sense of tradition.

In spite of this unfortunate reputation, it seemed the best route so that was where they decided to travel. As they unnerved the horses, Aedann and Isaac stayed at the back of the waggon while the two wizards rode up front. In the early afternoon, Isaac spotted four arachnid robots moving out of the brush to attack Victoria. He knew that these robots tended to be used as spies, saboteurs, and suicide drones by technologists throughout Numeria. This meant that they were almost certainly working for the Technic League.

Isaac shouted out a warning as he got out his bow. The robots attacked Victoria’s horse, causing it to panic and bolt, throwing her to the ground. Eduard went off to catch Victoria’s horse while Aedann, Bellatrix, and Dugald dismounted the waggon and rushed to Victoria’s side. Victoria cast an acid splash then crawled out of the way as Bellatrix hit one from a flank.

Aedann hit one, smashed it, causing it to explode. He then hit a second and a third with the slash and caused a cascade of explosions, wiping the robots out. They took a while getting Victoria her horse back as Eduard proved to be a pitiful horseman. It ended up being Victoria’s raven familiar Huginn who actually succeeded in retrieving the horse after an hour of hilarity.

It took a day to get to the First Blade’s Path, a great dry riverbed-like trench cutting across the Numerian Plains. It took some time before Isaac found a navigable path down to the bottom and then back up the other side. They set up camp for the night after successfully getting across. The night passed uneventfully and then they proceeded onwards.

Four days later, on Rova 3rd in the evening, they set up camp one day away from Aldronard’s Grave. During the night, Isaac spotted two individuals sneaking into the camp with blades drawn. Isaac shouted out an alarm and the group woke in time to fight. Dugald had no time to put on his armor and had to charge into battle without it. Bellatrix hid under the waggon and waited as Isaac threw a flask of alchemist’s fire. The flask missed doing little damage.

Victoria stood up and cast spectral hand. Dugald picked up Valerie, stood up and moved towards the burning fire and the attackers. Seeing that he had no armor and a very large and nasty looking weapon, the two attackers moved into a flank on the dwarf. There they did significant damage from sneak attacks, but stepped into the light to do so. They clearly were wearing badges that marked them as Technic League.

Aedann charged in and struck one severely as Bellatrix snuck around to flank with Dugald. Isaac used the wand of cure light wounds to heal Dugald and Victoria tried to use her grave touch with her spectral hand, but missed. Dugald killed the one between himself and Aedann, who then moved around to try and attack again. The remaining rogue stepped back and threw alchemist’s fire on Dugald. She stepped right near Bellatrix who promptly stabbed her from the shadows. Dugald then stepped up and killed her with a single strike.

They healed up then rested for the rest of the night before breaking camp and travelling on to Aldronard’s Grave.

[Feros]

Session 6:

They arrived near sunset to find the portcullis closed, indicating that the fort was occupied. They were hailed from the watchtower and told to move on as the fort was currently experiencing plague. Isaac was rather suspicious, especially as the guards were speaking in an odd cadence. Isaac told them that two of the party were immune to disease and might be able to help.

The guards agreed and they opened the portcullis. Isaac and Aedann walked into the fort while the remainder of the group remained outside. As soon as they crossed the threshold, the portcullis crashed down, cutting them off from the rest of the group. Aedann and Isaac were attacked by a group of men that had their cheeks and lips cut back to show their teeth. Isaac recognized them as members of the Smilers, one of the gangs of Scrapwall.

The leader of the Smilers threw what appeared to be some form of grenade between the two intruders. Eduard cast grease on Bellatrix who ran at the portcullis and slid straight through the bars. She then ran up and kicked the grenade back into the middle of the Smilers. Dugald began smashing at the portcullis with Valerie to break it down.

Victoria cast spectral hand and moved up to the gate. Aedann charged the closest Smiler and hit him with his sword. Isaac drank and extract of bull’s strength and drew his rapier. The Smilers stepped back and fired their pistols against the two original intruders, ignoring the greased gnome. They did a small amount of damage from grazing shots as the grenade exploded, filling the surrounding area with a foul-smelling toxic gas. Aedann was immune, but the Smilers were all affected. Only one succumbed to nausea, however.

The Smiler leader attacked Aedann with his hand axes and then tried to flee the poison cloud; Aedann took him down with one strike as he did so. Eduard cast glitterdust and blinded two of the remaining gang members as Bellatrix and Isaac worked at coordinating their attacks on the remaining seven Smilers. Victoria cast chill touch and sent her spectral hand in and struck one of the Smilers. Aedann moved in and took out two of them with a powerful strike. Isaac got a powerful strike in, having observed a weakness in his opponent’s armor and pierced his heart.

Isaac used the distraction of Aedann cutting down more of the Smilers to move aside and open the portcullis that Dugald was only about halfway through, letting the rest of the party into the fort. Aedann finished them off before Dugald could get into the fray. They looted the Smilers’ bodies and began searching Aldronard’s Grave. They were disturbed to find human body parts roasting over a fire as well as a number of corpses in the ruined stables. There was also gear for eight fighters.

They avoided the locked chapel with its reputation for being haunted and checked out the watchtower. There they found Captain Andalen Kraklos and three other Sarenrite crusaders still alive and tied up. They begged for aid and Isaac healed them up with cure light wounds potions. They returned the crusaders’ gear for them. Captain Kraklos was very grateful and told them everything he could about the Smilers and Scrapwall.

The crusaders told them about the Lords of Rust, the ruling gang of Scrapwall. They knew the Lords as a troll named Helskarg, a half-orc cleric named Nalakai, a four-armed monster known as Zagmaander, a chain-wielding ettin named Draigs, and an orc barbarian named Kulgara. A sixth lord was counted among the Lords of Rust—a purple-haired priestess named Meyanda; she was apparently slain or went missing while on a secret mission outside of Scrapwall. Her loss enraged Hellion.

They told them about the leader of the Smilers, a notorious hobgoblin necromancer named Marrow. The hand axe wielding man they slew was named Hatchet-Hand and served as the second in- command. The knights had heard rumors that she was also some sort of undead.

Captain Kraklos recognized that Aedann was undead but not evil and was curious if there was anything he could do to help the poor soul received his rest. Aedann politely declined the offer, saying he had to find his own path. Speaking of putting souls to rest led to a discussion of Aldronard’s ghost. The knights confirmed that it haunted the chapel and any attempts to free him had sadly failed. If any attempt was to be made, it would have to be made at night for the ghost to manifest.

The party made the decision to make the attempt and entered the chapel after dark. Isaac picked the locks and they passed through the foyer into the ruined chapel. Aldronard manifested before them with a tortured cry, calling out for his beloved Justinia as he did so. The ghost’s body trailed away to mist below the torso, while tears ran from his eyes and quickly evaporated into smoke. He moved with painful spasms, his arms and torso lurching awkwardly as his shattered ghostly bones grinded against each other.

When Aldronard saw Victoria, he paused in shock before addressing her as Justinia. He seemed to think that she bore a striking resemblance to his long lost love and asked her whether she was truly Justinia. Victoria reluctantly said that she was and at that point Aldronard begged her forgiveness for not being there to protect her. Victoria granted him forgiveness and the ghost sobbed in relief and gratitude, then raised his arms to the sky and asked Sarenrae’s pardon for unfairly blaming her, just as he had been unfairly blamed himself.

A soft beam of sunlight shown down from the night sky and carried him away. As this occurred, the party felt the warming presence of Sarenrae’s approval in their bodies. Each gained the ability to cast cure serious wounds once as a spell-like ability. Aedann was given a cure light wounds that would not harm him but heal him instead, as would all of these special abilities. The glow within him eased the pain of his existence as undead a little. He gained the understanding that Sarenrae would be there for him when he finally decided to rest.

The next day they were thanked profusely by the crusaders and they departed for Scrapwall, they crossed the Sellen River and approached the opening into Scrapwall. When they approached the entrance, they were greeted by one of the Steel Hawks guards posted there. He asked them what they wanted and Isaac responded that they were there to sell some trade goods. The guard laughed and asked if they knew what Scrapwall was. He passed them off as adventurers trying to pull something and called to his lieutenant, Sevroth Slaid.

Slaid came out, a tough looking woman with scars and tattoos. She asked them what they wanted and they stated they had business in Scrapwall. After looking them over, she ordered the gate opened and invited them into her common room to talk. They were told to keep their weapons stowed.

The party revealed they had killed Meyanda and that they were at Scrapwall to stop the Lords of Rust. Slaid smiled and offered them an opportunity to benefit the party as well as the whole community. She dismissed the other brigands so they could talk privately. She explained that her gang, the Steel Hawks, used to be the toughest gang in town before the Lords of Rust arrived, murdered their leader, and installed a Smiler named Birdfood as their new commander.

Her proposal to the party was simple—if they got rid of Birdfood and his orc minions so she could take control of the remnants of her gang, she would help them however she could. She told them where they could find Birdfood and that he uses hawks and a bow to pretty devastating effect. She told them that before they got to the northern side of Scrapwall and the Hawk Palace—the Steel Hawks’ headquarters—they would likely encounter one of his orc patrols.

Isaac asked about Dinvaya and Sevroth responded that she knew of the crazy lady and warned them about visiting her unannounced as Dinvaya did not like visitors. She wished them luck, and sent them on their way.

Scrapwall was a maze of streets and crevasses mixed with large open areas. In some places, jagged sinkholes filled with smoking ooze spewed fumes into the sky, while in others makeshift streets of ripped-out steel paneling had been laid down to prevent thoroughfares from being reduced to toxic mud pits by rain.

They encountered a large number of orcs as they crossed over towards the Hawk Palace and the party was immediately attacked. Eduard cast glitterdust and blinded a number of the orcs as Isaac shot one with the inferno pistol they got from Meyanda. The orcs threw their javelins at Eduard, Victoria, Aedann, and Dugald (missing); Dugald charged and killed two of them as Eduard cast umbral weapon on Aedann’s greatsword. Aedann charged in and began killing the orcs.

Isaac moved in and began studying an opponent as Bellatrix maneuvered for her next attack. Aedann missed one orc, but the shadow of his greatsword sliced it in two. Dugald and Aedann finished off the field with Bellatrix and Isaac’s help. They looted the orcs of what little they had then moved on to the Hawk Palace.

As they approached the stairs into the structure, another group of orcs appeared and threw their javelins at Dugald, but all bounced off the armor. He moved up the stairs to close the gap as Aedann followed him and managed to hit and kill one of the orcs. Isaac moved in and did some acrobatic moves to get up onto the walkway as Eduard blinded one orc. Victoria used grasping corpse to hold up one of the attacking orcs.

Aedann and Dugald began slashing and hammering the orcs into oblivion while Bellatrix made an acrobatics maneuver and flanked with Isaac to kill another orc. The sounds of battle summoned the rest of the orcs and Birdfood himself. He commanded his hawks to descend and attack Dugald. The orcs unable to attack Dugald, Bellatrix, Isaac, or Aedann threw their javelins at the “sparkly person” hitting Eduard significantly.

Isaac threw a bang grenade into the orcs and knocked the hawks and most of the orcs unconscious. Aedann and Dugald began removing orcs from the world as they proceeded up the stairs. Birdfood began sniping with his longbow. Bellatrix flipped down to aid in the killing off of the unconscious orcs while Isaac used his studied strike to finish off another orc and then followed Bellatrix to the other side of the stairs.

Victoria began harassing Birdfood with her spectral hand and grave touch as well as a ray of enfeeblement. Birdfood targeted her and nearly took her down with a single arrow. Dugald moved into attack Birdfood and Aedann fired a shot at another orc. Isaac hit Birdfood with his inferno pistol as Bellatrix charged the Smiler and hit him with her hammer.

Birdfood drew his longsword and attacked Bellatrix and Dugald, but missed. Aedann charged in and hit the Smiler hard as Isaac moved in to attack Birdfood as well, seeing a weak point under his arm on the backswing of his longsword and took him down with a well-placed rapier strike. They finished up the last orc then proceeded to kill off the unconscious orcs and the despicable Smiler. They then looted the bodies and searched the Hawk Palace for goods.

Sevroth Slaid arrived as they finished searching and looting and asked if it was done. When she got the affirmative on both the destruction of Birdfood and the upholding of their deal, she smiled and offered all the help she could give in their endeavours in Scrapwall.

[Feros]

Session 7:

Sevroth Slaid gave a more detailed overview of the layout and positions of the gangs of Scrapwall. She pointed out on a rough map the locations of the Scrapmaster’s Arena (a location for staging fights to prove an individual’s worthiness to join the Lords of Rust), Dinvaya and her Clockwork Chapel, the Haunted Canyon (a place all Scrapwallers avoid), the Smilers’ Headquarters, and Redtooth’s Raiders territory. Sevroth also mentioned a monster had its lair at the highest point in Scrapwall, most likely a manticore.

She also went into detail about Lords of Rust themselves. The gang was comprised of a motley group of creatures, but the majority were orcs, androids, and ratfolk. In all, the Lords of Rust numbered several hundred strong. The leadership was made up of Draigs, an ettin thug and executioner; Helskarg, a troll who guards the entrance to the gang’s lair, but also runs the fights in the Scrapmaster’s Arena; Kulgara, the half-orc commander of the Lords of Rust; Meyanda, an android who was once leader of the Lords of Rust but was killed by the party under Torch; Nalakai, a half-orc cleric of Hellion eager to become commander over Kulgara; Zagmaander, the most mysterious Lord of Rust was a crimson-skinned monster and something of a local bogeyman, serving Hellion as an enforcer and assassin.

Hellion was the lord and god of the Lords of Rust. Many have heard its voice but none can say they’ve seen Hellion in the flesh. Most believed Hellion to be a powerful fiend (a demon or devil), while others suspected it of being a Technic League agent using a fiend’s facade to sow fear. Others believed it to be an alien, the ghost of an ancient crew member from the Silver Mount, or even a trickster posing as a god.

With this information in hand, they asked permission of Sevroth to rest overnight and recover before they continued their exploration of Scrapwall. Eduard and Bellatrix joined the party the Steel Hawks were throwing for a short time while the rest of the party bunked down in the reclaimed Hawk’s Palace and waited until morning before heading out of Steel Hawks territory.

The next day, Rova the 5th, they headed out into the cramped pathways and ragged clearings of Scrapwall. As they passed through a narrow passage, Isaac shouted out a warning as eight dark creepers emerged from the shadows to surround and attack the party. Isaac’s circuitry glowed blue as he severely damaged one with his rapier. They attacked with daggers and hurt Victoria, Eduard, Dugald, and Bellatrix, with Eduard taking a great deal of damage. There was poison on the blades but the party managed to avoid it on the initial attack.

Bellatrix moved into a flank with Aedann as Dugald warned them about the fact that these dark folk would explode in a blast of light after they die. Eduard and Victoria backed out of the ambush to try and keep from the dark creeper daggers. Eduard then cast a color spray spell and blinded and stunned two of the dark folk. Aedann struck the one that Bellatrix hit and cleaved him in two, causing the dark creeper to explode in a flash of light, temporarily blinding all the other dark creepers and Isaac.

The creepers found themselves very ineffective now that they were blinded and Victoria miscast a chill touch while attempting to cast defensively. Aedann killed another two, but no one was blinded by the flashes. Isaac managed to hit his opponent in spite of his blindness and killed him and the flash blinded no one. Victoria cast acid splash on one of the dark creepers stunned by Eduard’s color spray and Aedann hit the same one to kill him and cleave through to the second stunned one, finishing them.

The two remaining blinded creepers flanked Dugald and one managed to hit the dwarf with a dagger. Dugald killed the last two with Valerie and the he and Bellatrix were able to avoid being blinded by the last flashes.

After healing up, they moved on, observing other denizens of Scrapwall murmuring to each other about the fact that the party had just been ambushed by a large number of dark creepers and came out relatively unscathed.

They headed north towards the entrance to the gorge in which Sevroth said Dinvaya and her Clockwork Chapel were located. As they entered the gorge, a raven came down and landed next to them with a scroll in its beak. It gave it to Bellatrix and then flew back up the gorge. It was an invitation from Dinvaya Lanalei to come to her chapel as she had observed their defeat of Birdfood and the dark creepers and was interested in meeting them.

They travelled up to the end of the valley and heard a sound of metal grinding on metal. This proved to be from a constantly churning, grinding wall of gears that blocked off the western end of the valley. Two larger gears remained motionless, situated at ground level in the center of the wall where one might expect to see a pair of doors. These rolled aside as the party approached, allowing them entrance into a chamber shaped like a large gear, with four inactive clockwork creatures located in four “spokes.”

From a side room came an attractive blonde half-elf who greeted them warmly and asked them to sit down. Dinvaya’s first action was to determine if Aedann was a threat to her or not. After determining he was not evil, she asked why they came. When informed of Joram Kyte’s message, she was pleasantly surprised and glad to hear she was no longer hunted by the Technic League. She admitted visiting Kyte in Torch would be “very nice” and determined to go after she had been of aid to the party in their endeavours in Scrapwall.

Victoria asked about her mother’s vision but tried to hold back part of the vision in regards to the demonic figure. Dinvaya pointed out that there seemed to be something missing and asked Victoria to share what she knew. Victoria described the whole vision and Dinvaya agreed that the fiend was likely a representation of Hellion. The fact that the vision described him as an “Iron God” was rather disturbing to her.

When asked about the power relay, she told them of a giant dish on the southeastern wall of Scrapwall that was most likely the reception point for the power generated at Torch. To get there they would have to find a way past the Scrapmaster’s Arena without facing all of the Lords of Rust. Redtooth would definitely know the best way through.

When they asked if there was any way to create an alliance with Redtooth’s Raiders, Dinvaya mentioned that Redtooth’s own brother, Whiskifiss, had been captured by the Smilers and that rescuing him would be an immediate in with the Raiders. But it would mean assaulting the Smilers’ Headquarters.

Dinvaya then offered the chapel as a safe headquarters for them in their excursion into Scrapwall and told them what little she could of the Smilers’ defences. She assured them that they would encounter some resistance once they penetrated Smiler territory, but it was unlikely to be organized to any significant degree.

They headed out and sure enough upon entering the Smilers’ territory, a group of seven Smilers accosted them, with the leader saying, “Dinner!” Eduard fired off a glitterdust spell covering six of the brutes, blinding three of them. Aedann moved in and took out the three with a single swing.

Dugald and Bellatrix moved in to flank another Smiler as Victoria hit him with another acid splash. They spread out and opened up with their pistols, hitting Dugald and Aedann but doing little damage. Aedann moved in and took out another three with a single strike. Dugald missed the last one as Bellatrix moved about and struck him. He tried to move and Dugald crushed him with Valerie.

After looting the corpses, they proceeded on to the Smilers’ headquarters. They found a spot where the ridge of refuse and junk was sheer. A gray metal wall sat at the base of the cliff with a metallic deck protruding south from its surface. The open-air deck was sheltered by a awning of furs and scrap. Metallic double doors sat in the center of the metal wall and above these doors was a metallic arm of some sort with what appeared to be a tube-shaped device fitted with a red crystal extending from the tip. There were a few scorch marks marring the deck’s surface.

Bellatrix walked up the stairs and was immediately shot by two red beams of light from the tube held by the mechanical arm, but neither was lethal. She immediately retreated down the steps and reconsidered how to approach the problem. Eduard cast invisibility on Bellatrix and she was able to approach the doors. Bellatrix found the doors were secured with chains on the other side. She then climbed up and disabled the arm and took the energy rifle that had been attached to it.

After climbing down and having the rest of the group join her, she and Isaac worked at getting the chains off the inner latches. Successful, she opened the doors to reveal a large room with old wooden benches lining the west and east walls. Two ruined metal tables sat in the center while a nook to the north had a countertop strewn with bones and bits of junk. Two chandeliers made out of hanging bundles of skulls and bones lit the room. At the edge of the room was a large brutish man with an oddly formed greatclub and wearing feathers. He bellowed and then moved to attack.

Aedann moved in and hit the barbarian as Bellatrix attacked and drew blood. He smashed down his greatclub on Aedann and Isaac moved in to help. Eduard loaded his crossbow and waited as Victoria cast boneshaker on the man, seriously hurting him. Aedann and the barbarian exchanged strikes as Bellatrix found she was unable to get in a precise strike: somehow he seemed to anticipate her actions and counter them with a rather uncanny dodge.

Victoria hit him with a second boneshaker spell as Aedann began getting many nasty wounds on him from the greatclub. Eduard hit the barbarian with a blinding ray and dazzled him as Aedann struck solidly again. But then the barbarian smashed in Aedann’s skull, killing the geiswicht. Victoria hit the Smiler with a ray of enfeeblement, reducing his strength a little. Dugald moved in and killed the Smiler with a single powerful blow.

As Victoria began to investigate the corpses, the doors to the east opened up and six Smilers attacked. Dugald was immediately shot by five of the Smilers and one tried to stab him. Victoria cast ghoul touch through Huginn to paralyze one of the Smilers. The smell coming off the raven caused two of the Smilers to become sickened and Bellatrix hit the paralyzed one with a dart as Dugald smashed Valerie into another Smiler.

The Smilers moved into the room to try and create flanks and one was killed by Dugald and Isaac on the way in. They hurt Isaac and Dugald, but Dugald swung his hammer around and killed four of them in rapid succession. Isaac took out the last one with an incredibly precise strike through the heart with his rapier.

With Aedann dead, they decided to retreat for the day and headed back to the Clockwork Chapel to rest and see what could be done for the geiswicht. They requested that Aedann be buried in the ground there for eight hours, which Victoria said would revive him. Dinvaya agreed and helped inter the corpse with a blessing from Brigh. They then healed up and rested, waiting for Aedann to return if he could.

[Feros]

Session 8:

The next morning, Rova the 6th, Aedann awoke and moved the metal slab that covered his shallow grave out of his way and arose looking quite worse for wear. Isaac and Victoria worked at repairing his body until he was fully restored. The party then set out to try and take the Smilers’ headquarters again.

When they got back to the headquarters, the doors were shut again. Bellatrix noticed that the robotic arm was now mounted with a ballista instead of a laser rifle. Bellatrix got Eduard to cast invisibility on her and she then climbed up and removed the bolt out of the ballista. She climbed back down and checked the doors; they were sealed with the chain again. Isaac helped unseal the doors and then they got Dugald and Aedann to open the doors while Isaac and Bellatrix got out of the way.

As they opened the doors, they were shot at by four Smilers that were waiting for them in the entry hall. The shots missed Dugald and did little damage to Aedann with glancing shots. The four then drew their daggers and moved into flanks on the two warriors while another four Smilers opened up with their pistols from the doors to the east. These did a little more damage, but not much.

Victoria cast chill touch but was missed on her first attempt to hit one of the Smilers attacking Dugald. Isaac studied an opponent and struck a solid hit with his rapier while aiding Aedann with fighting another Smiler. Dugald smashed one down, hurt another, and then flattened a third with one massive swing.

Aedann killed the one hit by Isaac and swung around to kill the last Smiler in melee with them. Bellatrix moved into the room and threw a dart, but missed. Eduard used his crossbow to injure one as the Smilers drew their daggers and moved in to attack. Bellatrix hit the one Eduard shot with her hand axe before Dugald crushed him. The rest of the Smilers moved in but failed to hit anyone. Victoria tried to strike with her chill touch, but missed again.

Isaac shot at one with his inferno pistol and injured one while Dugald stepped in and killed her. He then continued his swing and took out another one. Aedann stepped in and killed the last one.

After looting the bodies, they began exploring the rooms to the east. They found a hallway with barracks and a stove with gnawed human bones tossed in it. Isaac discovered a secret door at the north end of the hall after an exhaustive but otherwise fruitless search. They found a short hallway beyond that led to another secret door.

Isaac and Bellatrix opened that door to reveal a large chamber with several metal tables with strange devices sporting metallic arms, many of which ended in blades, needles, or saws. The area reeked of blood and rusty brown stains were splattered on the floor and walls. The chamber was lit by several burning skulls sitting here and there throughout the room. In the center of the room were three shambling corpses with miscellaneous bits of rusted machinery fused to their bodies.

Victoria moved into the room and took command of one of the rust risen corpses. Isaac fired the laser rifle and hit the only undead he could see in the room. Two of them attacked Victoria while the one she controlled attacked and missed one of them. Victoria tried to touch one of the shambling corpses with her chill touch but missed again. She then got out of the way blocking the warriors from getting into the room, but got attacked and bit by one of the undead.

Bellatrix ran into the room and moved near a table while Dugald stepped out into the room and slammed both aggressive undead, destroying one of them. Victoria’s undead creature attacked the remaining one and did a little damage while it struck Dugald with a power drill. Aedann moved into the room and cut it twain.

The party moved fully into the room and they found bins filled with mechanical parts and body parts. Isaac discovered another secret door in the chamber just to the north of the one they entered by. As they were searching a door to the south opened up and Marrow, the hobgoblin necromancer leader of the Smilers, blasted Bellatrix, Aedann, Eduard, Victoria, her rust risen lackey, and Huginn with a lightning bolt spell. Bellatrix took no damage as she was able to dodge the bolt and the rust risen absorbed the damage done to it.

Bellatrix moved in and killed a zombie with her axe as seven more zombies swarmed out and around her. Bellatrix got slammed a few times as Isaac studied a zombie and injured it. Victoria retreated and tried to protect Huginn from taking any more damage. Her rust risen moved in and began attacking the zombies. Dugald charged in and crushed two of the zombies as Eduard shot one with his crossbow.

Aedann moved in and sliced through three zombies with a mighty swing, but Marrow took control of Aedann and she commanded him to, “kill the Halfling and the Dwarf.” He corrected her that it was actually a gnome and then moved to attack Bellatrix. Bellatrix fled.

One of the zombies slammed Isaac solidly and he responded with a rather ineffective rapier strike. Victoria sent in her rust risen and it attacked a zombie, but missed as Victoria popped a potion of cure moderate wounds. Dugald smashed a zombie then moved back away from Aedann.

Aedann slammed the rust risen and cleaved into Dugald, doing significant damage. Marrow cast hold person on Eduard, taking him out of the combat. Bellatrix slashed another zombie and tried to get further from Aedann. Isaac used the wand of cure moderate wounds to heal up Victoria as her rust risen attacked the last zombie. Victoria moved in and touched Aedann with her chill touch and caused him to drop his sword and flee in panic.

Dugald moved in to attack Marrow in her chamber and smacked her hard with Valerie. Eduard shook off the paralysis as Marrow took a step back and cast charm person on Dugald. But she commanded him to attack Bellatrix, and that allowed him to break the magic effect. Bellatrix jumped up on a table and finally killed the last zombie with her axe.

Isaac moved in and quickly sized up Marrow, spearing her with a light rapier strike. Victoria and her rust risen moved into marrow’s room and got the creature to attack the necromancer. Victoria missed with a ray of exhaustion spell as Dugald moved around and slammed Marrow again. Eduard missed with his crossbow as Marrow hit Dugald with a wand of ray of enfeeblement and reduced his strength considerably.

Bellatrix snuck into the room as Isaac struck another powerful strike. Victoria cast boneshaker on Marrow as Dugald struck again, but wasn’t able to do too much damage. Eduard then fired his crossbow and buried his bolt right between her eyes.

They looted Marrow’s body and searched the area while waiting for Aedann to come back. Isaac found a metal locker with Marrow’s gear but set off a lightning bolt trap the injured him. Bellatrix found some small sized adventurer’s gear on a table in Marrow’s room.

They healed up before moving on through the double doors out of the surgery. They sent “Rusty,” the rust risen commanded by Victoria, through first as they hoped he would absorb any traps or ambushes. He emerged through a second set of double doors into an oval-shaped chamber with over a dozen large glass tanks sitting against the walls. The tanks themselves were semi-opaque but several of them seemed to contain some sort of figure within.

Each tank had a metal-rimmed door on its front and one tank to the north was wrapped with several coils of rope. As Rusty stepped into the chamber, a dozen Smilers moving like zombies emerged from the tanks to attack it. Victoria recognized that all the Smilers had been operated on and some damage must have been done to their frontal lobes.

Victoria ordered Rusty to attack and he did managed to damage one—right before being bashed into nothing by greatclubs. Victoria tried to attack with chill touch but missed. She was then hit by one of the lobotomites. Dugald moved in and began to swing Valerie in a lethal arc, killing the one damaged by Rusty and then smashing into another two.

Bellatrix moved in to provide flanks and tumbled through their defences. Aedann moved in and began carving into the lobotomites. Eduard moved to see what was going on and shot one with his crossbow, killing one that Aedann had hit.

Victoria cast vampiric touch and drained one of them and then moved out of the way for the warriors. She got hit by a greatclub, but the energy she had absorbed took the total of it. Isaac moved in and began stabbing to create weakened lobotomites for Dugald and Aedann. Dugald killed two and set up one for Bellatrix to take down one. Aedann moved in and slashed into the remaining three. Eduard used animate rope to untie the tank covered in ropes.

Dugald moved in and finished off another two while Aedann charged the last one and killed him. Bellatrix opened the tank and found a wounded ratfolk tied up and begging for help. They untied him and found out he was Whiskifiss, the ratfolk they were there to rescue. He asked about his gear, and Bellatrix returned what they had found in Marrow’s room to him. They healed him up and got ready to leave.

They went back into the surgery and found the second secret passage actually led out of Scrapwall, giving them a secret entrance and exit to the town. They finished searching the now empty headquarters and then began to escort Whiskifiss home.

As they entered Redtooth’s Raiders’ territory, they encountered a group of Smilers attacking some ratfolk. The fight was brief and brutal, with Aedann and Dugald eliminating the Smilers very quickly. The ratfolk were grateful and overjoyed to see Whiskifiss. They invited the party back to their warren to meet with their leader, Redtooth.

[Feros]

Session 9:

Whiskifiss and the ratfolk led them to some four foot tall tunnels into the walls of rusted scrap. Everyone other than Bellatrix had to crouch low as the ratfolk led them to a spot where there were a number of dire rats. They asked if they could blindfold the party before proceeding. The party consented and they led the now blind party on to meet Redtooth.

Isaac kept close attention to how far they moved and realized they had hardly gone much further in—perhaps just through one wall—before being freed of the blindfolds. They were in a small chamber with two exits. From one came a chittering sound that Whiskifiss quieted and explained that it was, “just Chirpus,” and that he was reacting to the metal Aedann and Dugald were wearing. They then went through the double doors that made up the second exit.

There they found a rough oblong room at the far end of which was the only piece of furnishing: a throne made out of scrap junk parts. Sitting on the throne was a pretty reddish haired ratfolk. Redtooth cried out and jumped off the throne to run over and hug her brother. She then thanked the party ecstatically and welcomed them to her home. Isaac responded, “No problem,” to which Aedann had some reason to take exception.

She offered any help to whatever they were trying to accomplish in Scrapwall. They mentioned the power relay from Torch and this led to a discussion of Meyanda’s fate. Redtooth was pleased that they had already thwarted some of Hellion’s schemes, and she confided in the party that her gang needed help if they were to survive Hellion and his Lords of Rust.

She informed them that there were only two ways through to where the receiver array was located: Scrapmaster’s Arena or a pass through the highest point in Scrapwall. The Arena was dangerous at best without an invitation and not much less dangerous with one. The high pass was the territory of a ferocious manticore that preyed on the denizens of Scrapwall.

If they could get past the beast or the Arena, they would be able to easily get into what used to be the Thralls of Hellion territory. That gang was disbanded by Hellion not long ago, but there might still be remnants left. Beyond that territory was the receiver array and to the north of that the Haunted Canyon, where spirits guarded a crashed sky vessel.

Redtooth explained that she was eager to help bring down Hellion and could assist in an assault by blowing up the receiver array and Scrapmaster’s Arena if she could get her hands on more explosives than she currently has access to. To that end she suggested that there could be more explosives and equipment in the wrecked ship of the Haunted Canyon, but getting that equipment could be difficult. She also warned the party that something odd was inhabiting the base of the receiver array; she was unclear as to what it was, but only vultures approached the area now and they generally stayed air loft most of the time.

The party thanked her for the information and traded some of their gear for items that Redtooth had collected to better equip themselves for the expedition. These included several grenades to fill out a variety of options for Isaac. They then travelled back to the Clockwork Chapel without needing to be blindfolded as Redtooth now declared them allies. There they healed up and rested for the night.

On the morning of Rova 7th, they travelled to the high pass through the manticore’s territory. Dugald’s fear of heights made him nervous the entire way, as they were very close to long drops most of the journey. At the highest point of the pass they found a large tangled mess of razor-spiked wire, rusty chains, bones, and rubble. Beyond that was an opening into what appeared to be a crude cave.

Bellatrix moved through the nest into the cave without taking damage as she moved gracefully around the sharp edges in the nest. Isaac drank an extract of spider climb as Eduard cast the spell and together they moved around the edge. Victoria, Aedann, and Dugald moved through the nest, taking some damage from the rusty metal and bone spikes, but it wasn’t bad overall.

They searched the cave and found an assortment of valuables and magic items, including a ring of the ram. As Aedann started to exit the cave, he, Dugald, Eduard, and Victoria were all hit with spikes from the hovering manticore just above the nest. It landed and roared at them. Isaac shot the beast with his inferno gun as Dugald charged into the nest, his armor protecting him from damage.

Dugald slammed it with Valerie as Aedann moved in and attacked with his greatsword. Bellatrix moved in, but was unable to reach the manticore to strike. Victoria cast boneshaker on the beast and Eduard used his wand of scorching ray to do significant spell damage. The manticore bit Dugald, subjecting him to radiation poisoning from the green, glowing saliva. The dwarf toughed it out and Isaac hit it with his inferno gun again.

Dugald and Aedann slammed it again as Bellatrix moved to get a flank. Victoria repeated with boneshaker and Eduard missed with a beam from his wand of ray of enfeeblement. The manticore tried to flee and as it took off it tossed coils of spiky wire and bits of sharp rubble into the air injuring Dugald and Aedann. Isaac moved out to the edge of the cave and shot at the retreating manticore with his laser rifle, killing it.

Bellatrix searched the nest but found nothing. Victoria, Dugald, and Aedann left the nest and cave and waited for Bellatrix to finish searching. Eduard and Isaac used spider climb to move around outside the nest to join the others. They then proceeded down into what used to be the Thralls of Hellion.

They found the area empty and they decided to first investigate the haunted canyon before checking the receiver array. They moved north and entered a long, straight trench into the sides of Scrapwall filled with mists that blocked all vision beyond five feet. As they went along, they were attacked by four sprits hurling sharp rubble at them. One showed itself as a skeletal figure, frightening Dugald. Dugald fled as the rest of the party fought the poltergeists.

Isaac shot the incorporeal creatures with his gun as Victoria took command of one of the poltergeists, taking it out of the fight. Eduard moved away from the group as Aedann struck the spirits with his magic greatclub. Bellatrix fired off a magic bolt from her crossbow and hit one, but did very little. Victoria miscast a disrupt undead while trying to cast defensively and then backed out of the melee to join Eduard. Eduard used his wand of scorching ray and damaged one as Aedann finished it off with a powerful strike.

Dugald charged back after coming to his senses and proceeded to destroy one with Valerie. Eduard began casting disrupt undead and Aedann finished off the remaining poltergeist. Victoria spoke to the poltergeist and was able to make out that the spirits were remnants of a group of crew of the crashed space ship. It spoke with fear of large monsters with claws and moving brains that had attacked the large ship that crashed in Numeria. The spirit called them “brain collectors.” It also spoke of a spherical creature with tendrils that could manipulate their thoughts. Victoria ordered the spirit to be at rest for as long as she could command it, and it left them behind.

They proceeded on and found the wrecked vessel. It was covered in rubble except for one open portal, which they used to enter the downed ship. They found an empty atrium and passed inward, pulling out an everlasting torch. They moved through a hall and Dugald looked into a room where another group of poltergeists rose up and tried to frighten the dwarf. They failed and combat was joined.

Bellatrix and Victoria moved in to try and attack as Aedann and Dugald stepped up and used their weapons. As they fought, one of the objects that got thrown by the poltergeists was a cylinder that had its pin dislodged. The resulting explosion of the concussion grenade slammed Dugald and Aedann. Dugald and Aedann managed to finish off the poltergeists with some mighty strikes and Isaac began healing up the fighters using his wands.

Upon searching the room they discovered some more gear, explosives, and a timeworn grenade launcher. They checked the room across the hall and found four cylinders, two with human bodies and another two with rotted remains in broken suits of armor. As Isaac opened a chamber to get a better look the two rotted remains animated and broke free, filling the room with a disgusting smell that nauseated Victoria.

Bellatrix, Dugald, and Aedann began smashing the skeletons hard as Victoria lost her last meal while Huginn held her hair back. Eduard cast disrupt undead on one of the monsters as Isaac fired his inferno gun and finished off one. Bellatrix, Aedann, Eduard, Dugald, and Isaac finished off the last one.

Victoria explained her lapse saying that she was used to formaldehyde and other scents to deal with the putrefaction and she was simply caught unprepared. Both of the preserved humans crumbled to dust as soon as their cylinders were opened. They searched the cylinders and found a grey access card in each one. There was a hole in the rubble that used to be a wall, but they decided to check the last room from the first hall. They found a room with crushed equipment and glowing green goo caked on some of the broken gear. Nothing else was found, so they proceeded back through the small hole in the cylinder room.

They found a sealed door which took some effort to open. When the door opened they got hit with a blast of stale air. There was a cracked black window on the western wall of the chamber, half-buried under rubble. Curved consoles of controls lined the walls with three chairs made of an off-white material facing them. A figure dressed in red fabric sat slumped over the console in the westernmost chair.

As Aedann entered the room the figure collapsed into dust and the party was overwhelmed with visions; flashes of emotion mixed with the sound of screaming and explosions, sudden feelings of vertigo, and the conviction that gravity has gone mad. Bellatrix, Victoria, Eduard, and Dugald were staggered and fell prone, victims of the visions of the crash.

At that point, the figure’s spirit rose up and attacked Isaac draining his life energy. Isaac through a flask of holy water at it splashing the wraith. Aedann stepped over Dugald and damaged it with his magic greatclub as Isaac hit it with another holy water, damaging it and splashing Aedann. Dugald moved away and stood up while Victoria cast disrupt undead at the wraith but missed.

The wraith kept trying to harm Aedann, but was unable to hurt the geiswicht. The wraith then moved on to attack Dugald. But this led Aedann to flank the spirit and he and Dugald proceeded to destroy the monster. They searched the room after healing up as best they could and they found a technical device on what had been the captain’s corpse. It was some sort of translation/recording device. Isaac was able to play an audio log in Androffan that had been stored in it:

“This is the final report of salvage module Chrysalis, Captain Yurian Valako reporting. Divinity is lost; the rest of the ship’s crew is presumed dead or worse. The surviving crew of Chrysalis and I are boarding a launch and will attempt an emergency landing, but without AI control, the prospects of a safe landing are minimal. I’ve secured an inhibitor facet—if I can install it into the Unity interface, it should disable the AI’s security long enough for us to reclaim control and perhaps even signal for help from home. I’m boarding the launch now, and will append further reports after our successful landing.”

After listening to the log entry and puzzling over it, they finished searching and found the mentioned inhibitor facet in a pocket. As they got ready to leave the cockpit, a glowing ball of light appeared and attacked them.

[Feros]

Session 10:

The ball of light attacked Dugald with electrical power and Victoria identified it as a will-o’-wisp before it vanished. She threw an acid splash but missed and Isaac drank an extract of see invisibility to continue to see the creature. Bellatrix squeezed in and missed the creature as Dugald swung and missed as well.

Eduard and Isaac confirmed that it was, indeed, a will-o’-wisp but couldn’t give any more details than that. Eduard missed with his crossbow and the wisp attacked Dugald again. Aedann and Dugald continued to swing and miss, only occasionally hitting as it continually wore down Dugald with its electrical strikes almost unto death, with Isaac using healing magic to keep him on his feet. Finally enough damage was done to the creature for Aedann to finally take it out with a solid hit.

With the death of the will-o’-wisp, the party headed out of the crashed ship to discover the unnatural mists were gone. They had exorcised the evil of the Haunted Canyon. They then healed up Dugald and proceeded to the receiver array to see how it might be destroyed with the explosives they salvaged from the wrecked ship.

They passed through a narrow passage and Bellatrix shouted out a warning. The rest of the party were ambushed by a group of four chokers, remnants of the Thralls of Hellion gang. One of them each attacked Victoria, Isaac, Eduard, and Bellatrix. All were grabbed by the throats, cutting off their abilities to speak or cast spells. Aedann stepped in and missed with his first strike as Isaac fired his inferno gun at his attacker and hit.

Bellatrix broke free of the choker’s grasp and hit the choker with her axe. The one holding Eduard struck at Aedann, but failed to get a grip. Huginn attacked the choker holding Victoria with his beak as Victoria and Eduard struggled to escape. Dugald missed with his attack, but Aedann struck the ones holding Eduard and Isaac, killing them. Isaac then stated that they were fighting chokers, which everyone sort of figured out before that.

The chokers backed up into the rough piles of junk in order to protect themselves better, releasing Victoria as they did. Dugald approached and missed as Aedann moved in and attacked the last two, killing them. Eduard and Victoria confirmed Isaac’s analysis: they had been chokers. They decided to return all the way back to the Clockwork Chapel to get fully healed before taking on the receiver array.

They took a twenty-four hour break and got Dinvaya to make Isaac’s rapier magical. The next day they headed out and returned to Redtooth. She congratulated them on ending the haunting and then set up her detonator to work with the explosives they recovered. She advised them to find a weak point under the dish to place the charges so she and the others could blow the place once they got the signal from the party. They then set out for the former territory of the Thralls of Hellion.

They arrived at the receiver array and found a crevice filled with rickety walkways leading to openings and doors. Bodies of chokers tattooed and wearing symbols like the clawed hand they found under Torch were everywhere. It was completely silent.

Isaac drank his heightened awareness extract and upon consulting the others determined the walkways were safe. They began ascending single file while Dugald tried to keep from panicking over the ever increasing height. The walkways swayed rather alarmingly, but they seemed to hold well enough.

Suddenly Dugald had a vision of the undead from the fallen city of Saggorak overwhelming the defenders of Kolvar and destroying everyone in his home town. He shook it off and continued. They opened a door and travelled down a corridor to a locked door. Bellatrix checked it over and opened the lock, revealing and empty room.

Bellatrix felt her imagination and cheer draining from her, seeing her skin turning a dull gray. She stated that she was Bleaching, but to everyone else she seemed unharmed. Victoria cast detect magic but determined only divination magic was being used. They managed to get Bellatrix calmed down and made her see reality, but she remained somewhat sapped.

They proceeded up a stairwell to find another door off a corridor. The room was also empty, but had another door leading back out onto the walkways. At the end of the corridor behind another door they found a chamber in ruins. Fragments of a scrap clawed hand had been gathered together to form some sort of nest. The doors to the north opened back on to walkways and a corridor. They decided to follow the corridor.

They found a series of small rooms that had been used as barracks, with one room opening up onto the walkway back to the nest room. As they explored the barracks, Eduard was grabbed by agents of the Technic League—that only he could see or feel—that began ripping the magic from his mind using a robot while replacing his body parts with technology.

Isaac suggested they find the source of these illusions and deal with it. They went through a final set of doors and completed their explorations, but there was no sign of anything but the party being present. They determined they would have to climb up the crevice to place the explosives on the support structures, a dangerous proposition given the lack of trust in their senses.

Aedann carried Isaac up and Bellatrix tried to follow, but got stuck halfway up. Isaac placed the explosives and then they began to descend while Bellatrix cried out for help. Dugald suddenly remembered the Technic League destroying Watch Hill, though he couldn’t understand why. Aedann picked up Bellatrix as they climbed down and they arrived safely back on the walkways.

Bellatrix and Eduard continued to be overwhelmed by the visions as Isaac used his see invisibility extract and located a strange looking creature: thin tendrils trail from a misshapen sphere with a gray orb hanging beneath it. Isaac recognized the monster as a void wanderer, a monster that fed off the fears it could generate in its victims using their own memories.

Isaac fired his inferno gun and hit the creature temporarily revealing its location. Bellatrix shot at it with her crossbow and Victoria missed with a spell. Isaac hit it again showing Aedann where it was located, allowing him to swing out into the air next to the walkways and striking the void wanderer. It struck out at Aedann with its tendrils, but did little damage.

Dugald got hit as he approached and was subjected to intense pain from the tendrils. He then managed to smash the creature with Valerie. Eduard cast glitterdust, making it visible. Bellatrix missed with her crossbow again while Victoria cast touch of fatigue on it using a spectral hand. Isaac fired off the laser rifle and managed to fire it without using a charge though he missed. Aedann slashed it hard and it attacked Bellatrix with another wave of visions and she fell unconscious. It then slipped into a small crevice nearby and hid from sight.

They discussed what they should do and they had Aedann put Bellatrix in his ruck sack while Victoria took ten minutes to prepare another spell. It came back looking entirely healed. Isaac fired off the laser rifle, but it shut down instead. Aedann fired his bow while Dugald threw a hammer and missed. Eduard cast glitterdust through his wand and Victoria cast vampiric touch on the aberration.

Dugald now remembered that Watch Hill was not destroyed by the Technic League, but by waves of undead that had followed him from his home, making him somewhat responsible from his perspective. Isaac hit it with his inferno gun while Eduard missed it with his wand of scorching ray. Aedann moved into position and jumped off the walkway in an attempt to bring it to the ground. He missed, resulting in both himself and Bellatrix in the ruck sack crashing into the ground.

Dugald then managed to hit it with a throwing hammer as Victoria cast chill touch but missed. Then the overwhelming guilt over the destruction of Watch Hill began to affect Dugald, but he threw it off. Isaac hit the void wanderer with an arc grenade, damaging and dazing it. Aedann stood up and fired his bow into the creature and Dugald threw another hammer and missed. Eduard hit with a scorching ray from his wand and Victoria hit with her chill touch, killing it at last.

With the explosives set, they headed out of the crevice and signalled Redtooth. The explosion was massive, and the receiver array collapsed in on top of itself. The ratfolk cheered and they and the party retreated back to Redtooth territory. They returned to the Clockwork Chapel for more healing.

On Rova 10th, they headed back to Redtooth’s territory. As they approached Redtooth’s warren, they were attacked by three strange looking creatures like giant bugs with long, feathery antennae. Bellatrix got in a good shot with a dart while Isaac staggered them with a concussion grenade. They then charged in directly at Dugald and Aedann.

Aedann killed two of them with one swing and Dugald hit the last, but did not kill it. Victoria recognized them as rust monsters and shouted out a warning to the two metal shod fighters next to them while hitting it with an acid splash. Bellatrix moved in and flanked with Dugald but missed. Isaac killed it with his inferno gun and they proceeded on.

As they got close to Redtooth’s warren, a Smiler approached them and gave the party an invitation to come to Scrapmaster’s Arena and “audition’ for membership in the Lords of Rust. They consulted with Redtooth and the ratfolk agreed to help sabotage the arena on a prearranged signal when the fight was going on to allow the party to get into Hellion’s domain.

The next day they went to the arena and were allowed entrance. The mounds of junk and refuse stacked in tiers for seating were full of cheering people, ready to see a slaughter. The fighting arena measured several hundred feet in diameter and had an arched opening in its westernmost end and a large metallic structure like a squat tower on the eastern end. A wooden stairway wrapped around the tower’s sides, and a twenty foot-tall stage protruded out overlooking the arena below.

From the stage there emerged a massive troll with a grappling gun and leather armor with nasty spikes bellowed a challenge and she jumped off the stage onto a chariot that came out from underneath. It was drawn by two ogres and two more ogres came out and charged to the attack.

Eduard cast mirror image to protect himself. Aedann fired off his bow and managed to kill one of the ogres pulling the troll Helskarg with a shot to its right eye. Dugald moved forward and set his halberd, ready for a charge. An ogre came in and Dugald hit it while another took the place of the dead ogre on the chariot. Isaac threw out a concussion grenade to explode when the chariot ran over it, but it bounced backwards and exploded harmlessly.

Helskarg fired the grapnel into Aedann and then reeled him in onto her chariot. Bellatrix maneuvered to be ready to try and take down the chariot through rapid sabotage. Isaac moved into a flank with Dugald and severely damaged the ogre. Eduard cast a major image of the mutant manticore coming in to attack in the arena. Aedann swung out from his prone position to kill the two ogres pulling the chariot and caused it to come crashing to a halt.

Bellatrix jumped out from behind Dugald and killed it with another dart. Dugald moved in and attacked the troll with Valerie, dropping the halberd. Helskarg used the grapnel to cast Aedann away and slammed him into the ground like she was fly fishing.

Victoria used grasping corpse to grapple the troll. Eduard sent the illusory manticore to seem to attack the crowds which began to panic and flee. Aedann stood up and moved back towards the chariot. Bellatrix moved into a flank with Dugald who then hammered her as Isaac hit her with his inferno gun.

Helskarg ripped the arms of the grasping ogre corpses and freed herself. Victoria used her wand of ray of exhaustion, but missed. Eduard let the illusion continue without concentration as Bellatrix and Isaac struck the troll. Helskarg concentrated all her attacks on the “foul dwarf”, causing him to be severely rent with her claws.

Victoria manage to hit the troll with a ray of enfeeblement and Aedann hit her with his greatsword. Bellatrix moved around to cast the cure serious wounds that Sarenrae had blessed her with on Dugald as Isaac cast healing magic on Dugald. Helskarg attacked Dugald again, but did far less damage this time around. Aedann, Bellatrix, and Dugald moved around to create flanks and Aedann and Dugald missed spectacularly.

Isaac moved in and took a claw attack before striking with a studied strike. Helskarg attacked Dugald again, biting him hard. Bellatrix, Aedann, and Isaac combined to do significant damage, but she was still able to hurt Dugald again. Aedann and Dugald combined to pulverize her and Bellatrix beheaded the troll. Then Isaac used alchemist’s fire to take out the body and Victoria used acid splash on the head to finish her off.

Redtooth’s Raiders detonated the seating areas and the few remaining gang members were wiped out, freeing the party to move on to the stage and enter Hellion’s domain.

[Feros]

Session 11 (Part One):

The large wooden platform sat twenty feet above the battleground in front of a squat metal tower that was obviously part of a different, much older structure. A large nest of furs, rags, and bones sat in the middle of the platform. At the back of the stage were two large doors. There were two ten foot wide staircases to either side of the stage.

They decided to check out the doors first, so Aedann threw Bellatrix up and she rolled as she landed on the stage. Bellatrix fixed a knotted rope on the stage to let the rest climb up and join her. Dugald was very uncomfortable as he climbed, but managed to make it up and then hurried away from the edge.

After doing a search of the nest, they moved on to the doors. As they got close, two screens on either side of the doors flickered to life with static and then the visage of a horned, red demon. It named itself Hellion and told the party they had made a fatal error in defying his invitation to try out for the Lords of Rust. It demanded they kneel in fealty immediately.

Bellatrix began looking for a curtain or something to see who was hiding and operating the communication. Hellion cast unholy blight on the party, damaging them all, especially Dugald and Bellatrix who became sickened. The screens then went black.

After Bellatrix and Isaac searched the doors for traps, Dugald opened them to find an H-shaped chamber with gray metal walls adorned with rectangular panels of flickering glass mounted at head height. Bits of garbage and rotten food lay strewn across the floor and the air stank of ogres. No ogres were present though, so they assumed this was the lair of the ogres they had slain in the arena.

There were double doors on the opposite side of the chamber and two doors on each side protruding into the room. As they opened the door to the north, Hellion appeared on another monitor and threatened them to turn back or his faithful would kill them all brutally. He then vanished.

Behind the door was a staircase going down. The southern door also led to a staircase also going down. After searching the room, they found the double doors led to the staircases out to the arena. They decided to proceed down the northern staircase which led to a door.

Isaac searched the door for traps and Dugald opened the door, revealing a large room lit by tracks of panels of light set in the ceiling, ten feet above. To the west, the room ended in a wall of rubble, rock, and twisted metal, while to the east, a ten foot-diameter circular platform sat on the ground before a pair of large doors. Rectangular panels of glass were on the walls between crude paintings of a mechanical talon.

Ten acolytes of Hellion led by a half-orc cleric (which the group suspected was Nalakai, high priest of Hellion) were in the room, ready to fight. Nalakai cast a spell and the acolytes cast lesser confusion on Aedann, Dugald, and Bellatrix. Aedann was immune, they had no effect on Dugald, but Bellatrix began babbling incoherently as party got ready to fight.

Aedann moved in to the mass of acolytes and slew three with a single cleaving swing. Isaac threw a bang grenade and staggered five of the acolytes with the blast. Nalakai cast hold person on Dugald, freezing the dwarf in place.

Victoria turned the corner of the staircase so she could see into the room and sent Huginn out to place touch of fatigue on an acolyte as Dugald broke free of the hold spell. The acolytes attacked Huginn and Aedann, but they were ineffective.

Just then the wall screens flickered and the circular platform lit up and Hellion emerged into the room in that spot, screaming as he did so. Hellion cast a command “Drop!” on Dugald, but he was able to resist. Aedann took two mighty swings and killed another six of the acolytes. Bellatrix moved in and threw her dagger at the last acolyte, but missed.

Isaac moved in and fired his inferno pistol at Nalakai, but missed as well. Nalakai moved in and struck Aedann with his spiked gauntlet with a cure moderate wounds cast as well. Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement at Nalakai, striking him with a critical hit with the spell. The half-orc’s strength fell so low, he became unable to move from the spot next to Aedann. Dugald moved in and hit Nalakai hard.

The acolyte tried to hit Huginn as Eduard moved into the room and missed the acolyte with his crossbow. Hellion cast chaos hammer on the group, damaging the group as a whole. Aedann moved to try and help Dugald by flanking Nalakai, and hit the half-orc priest with a significant blow from his greatsword and shook the half-orc thoroughly.

Bellatrix and Isaac moved in and Isaac shot the last standing acolyte with his inferno pistol, but only grazed him. Nalakai turned and called out to Hellion for aid; Victoria cast chill touch on the last acolyte, killing him. Dugald moved into a flank on Nalakai and struck him very hard, killing the priest.

Eduard entered the room and readied against any action Hellion might take. Hellion cursed at the party and vanished. After they healed up, the doors to the east opened up and four robots that looked like they were assembled from scrap parts emerged on the attack.

Isaac fired off an EMP pistol that he had picked up in the wrecked ship, heavily damaging one of them. Eduard cast glitterdust on them, blinding all of them as it clogged their visual receptors. Aedann moved in and cut into one, destroying its sensors and its rotary saw.

They moved in and Aedann managed to smash one hard enough to disorient its brain and fracture its armor. The one without sensors and its rotary saw hit Aedann with a solid slam. Dugald and Bellatrix charged in but were unable to hit as Isaac hit another one with the EMP pistol, casuing its armor to break in a shower of sparks.

Aedann cut into two of them, destroying them with one swing. Victoria cast acid splash on a robot, and then that was followed by the robots hitting Dugald with a rotary saw. Dugald smashed one with Valerie and took out the rotary saw. Bellatrix finished it off with her hammer at a vital joint.

Isaac hit the last with an EMP pistol twice and then followed by Aedann hitting the power core and the servos. Aedann took a nasty electric shock back in return. It swung and hit the geiswicht, shocking and slicing him. Dugald finally crushed it.

They looted the bodies and then searched the room the robots came from. There they found some large, charged batteries shaped like tall glowing purple columns and more doors out of the room. They checked the room to the north and found Nalakai’s quarters. A search revealed a journal written in Orc, but it was too dense for a quick perusal, so Isaac stored it away for later study.

They checked the room to the south and found the acolytes barracks. A door to the south leaving the room was locked, but Bellatrix opened the lock and revealed a staircase going down into the dark. They decided to explore the level they were on before descending. Isaac saw screens everywhere, and realized that Hellion could see the party through them. He told Dugald to smash them.

Dugald smashed one and—the moment before he connected with Valerie—Hellion’s face appeared with an evil grin. Dugald got caught by a touch of idiocy from Hellion, reducing the dwarf to nearly animal level intelligence. They decided not to smash any more screens.

They went through the battery room to the double doors and entered a small chamber with a pit. There was a smell of decay and strangely polished scrap lying in the pit. Aedann moved in to look down into the pit and was caught unawares by the gray ooze that emerged to attack him. It slammed into him and burned him with acid.

Aedann hit the ooze twice, but his greatsword began taking damage from the ooze’s acid. Dugald decided to protect Valerie and used his halberd to attack and take the acid damage. Victoria cast acid splash and Isaac threw a flask of acid on it and finished it off. Victoria used mending to repair Aedann’s greatsword and Dugald’s halberd.

They explored a rough corridor heading west out of the barracks chamber and found it led to a secret door that opened into the temple room they had entered when they first arrived on this level. They then proceeded down the stairs out of the barracks chamber.

The stairs descended along the outer edge of a metal structure. A door allowed access into the structure from a landing, while lights cast illumination out to the south, into a large, damp cave. Far below, a pool of foul green fluid bubbled and smoked.

As the party made their way down the stairs Hellion manifested on the two monitors at the landing, warning them, “Turn back or die.” They insulted him instead, so Hellion extended its power through the monitors to cast confusion on the party, affecting Bellatrix and Victoria.

Bellatrix and Victoria hurt themselves with their weapons as the lights went out, plunging the area into utter darkness. Bellatrix, Victoria, Eduard, and Huginn were completely blind as the five dark creepers attacked. Isaac struck one with his rapier and warned all those who couldn’t see where each one was.

Victoria was able to concentrate and shake off the confusion effects for a moment. She cracked a sunrod and handed it to Huginn. She then cast vampiric touch spell and used Huginn to strike one of the dark creepers. Aedann killed two with one swing and they exploded in blasts of light, blinding the dark creepers, Victoria, and Isaac.

Bellatrix began babbling incoherently as Dugald swung and missed. Eduard stabbed one and moved back, and Isaac managed to hit with his rapier even blinded. The dark creeper moved and stabbed Isaac with a nasty hit. The other hit Dugald and Victoria joined in as the confusion once again took hold, but Victoria was unable to get through the armor.

Aedann squeezed in next to Isaac and killed another one, creating a flash that blinded Huginn. Dugald killed the last two and created another two flashes, but no one was blinded by these. Victoria continued to try and kill Dugald, but was highly ineffectual.

Isaac began to inspect the hallway beyond the door as he waited for the confusion to end. Victoria managed to scratch Dugald who decided to render Victoria unconscious. He smashed into her head with the handle of Valerie. Bellatrix hurt herself again as Isaac began checking the hallway doors. He found a guard post which was most likely where the dark creepers came from.

Victoria cried, “Die Dwarf, die!” and Dugald calmly replied, “No.” Dugald just backed up a few feet to see if she would shift her target to someone else. Bellatrix then attacked Victoria as Eduard headed out of the fight area. Isaac got to the next door and used his gray access card. Green flashed on the screen. He began trying to pick the lock.

Victoria now responded to Bellatrix’s attack by attacking her as the gnome began babbling again. Finally, Victoria got free of the spell but Bellatrix still hit her with her hammer one last strike before her mind cleared. They healed up and went to join Isaac.

They found the green access door all but impossible to open, but finally Bellatrix put her full effort into it and managed to crack it. They found a chamber with banks of mechanical devices, flashing lights, and panels displaying messages in an Androffan, images, and mysterious markings that shifted and changed with astonishing speed. A high-pitched drone emanated from all corners of the room.

Isaac determined that it was a central processor room and began inspecting the computers to figure out what they were doing. He found a spot where the inhibitor facet would fit and placed it in. There was a howl from the monitors and Hellion shut off the monitors. Suddenly, they heard great amounts of movement heading their way. Dugald headed out into the hall to block and intercept any attackers.

Bellatrix moved into the abandoned guard room and hid, ready to surprise the attackers. At that point, four small robots moved to attack Isaac. Two of them hit him with red fire beams which Isaac identified as laser torches. Victoria hit one of the robots with acid splash and Eduard hit one using his wand of scorching ray.

Aedann moved into the processor room and began smashing the tiny robots. Isaac shot at them with his EMP gun and destroyed another one. A dark slayer came in from the hall with a group of orcs following. It made it up to Dugald, but he smashed it and it imploded doing sonic damage to Victoria, Huginn, and Dugald.

The two tiny robots hurt Aedann and Isaac with their laser torches while Victoria and Eduard missed. Aedann smashed another robot as the orcs got in close to Dugald. Bellatrix managed to slam the orc with her hammer from hiding, killing the orc.

Two dark slayers, a dark stalker, and several dark creepers arrived in the hall the party had entered from as a dull roar was heard from out where the orcs had come from. The orcs cheered and called out, “Kulgara carves them open!”

Isaac hit the remaining robot with his EMP pistol, but failed to destroy it. Dugald killed an orc and the robot hit Isaac again; this time, Isaac fell unconscious. Victoria cast acid splash as Eduard backed into the processor room and killed an orc with his crossbow.

Aedann killed the last robot then moved to get out into the hall. Bellatrix feinted the orc and got a sneak attack to the kill. At that moment, the female orc leader of the Lords of Rust Kulgara arrived with a massive device that she swung while a sharpened chain spun around the edge: a combat chainsaw.

[Feros]

Session 11 (Part Two):

Kulgara carved through her own orc to get to Dugald, whom she then slashed with a nasty, massive blow. She roared in glee as dwarf blood sprayed the walls. Dugald hammered her with Valerie twice, but Kulgara almost shrugged off the earthbreaker’s blows.

Victoria cast boneshaker on Kulgara as Aedann moved out into the hall and Eduard used a nanite injector to heal Isaac and wake him up. Aedann killed an orc, stepped in and killed another dark slayer. The slayer imploded and deafened Victoria as it damaged Huginn, Eduard, Victoria, Aedann, and Bellatrix with sonic damage.

Bellatrix moved into fight the dark folk as Kulgara carved Dugald apart. The dwarf fell to the ground with massive wounds on his body. Isaac stood up and used his wand of cure light wounds on Dugald, saving his life. Dugald smashed into Kulgara with Valerie from the ground, but did little damage.

The last dark slayer cast chill touch on Bellatrix, but did little damage. The creepers moved in to try and flank Bellatrix, but she was too wily for them. Eduard threw the nanite injector to Victoria who used it on Dugald. Dugald rolled away back five feet as Aedann stepped up and cut a massive wound in Kulgara, a mortal wound.

Bellatrix hit a dark creeper and hurt one as Kulgara tried to move past Aedann. Aedann cut her down, but the orc had set off a plasma grenade damaging Eduard, Dugald, and Aedann. Isaac healed Dugald for a slight amount again.

The dark stalker and dark slayer attacked Bellatrix to little effect as she pleaded for help from Aedann. As he got ready to do so, a hiss was heard from where the orcs had come from and red, four armed humanoid armed with jagged longswords and a laser torch appeared: Zagmaander, the Blood Ghost.

Isaac recognized her as a Xill, an extra-planar invader that deposits its eggs in intelligent prey. Dugald shook off a charm person cast by Zagmaander as Eduard used his wand of ray of enfeeblement on the Xill to no effect.

Victoria sent Huginn over to help Bellatrix and hit the Xill with vampiric touch. Dugald stood up and cast his god-gift of cure serious wounds on himself. Aedann struck Zagmaander with solid blows, but enough to hurt the creature.
Bellatrix got hit by the dark stalker and was dazed by the magic in the attack. Zagmaander attacked Aedann with all four of her attacks, including a laser torch and bite. Eduard tried to cast a spell on the Xill, but couldn’t get through her spell resistance.

Victoria cast boneshaker on Zagmaander but also failed to get through the spell resistance. Dugald moved in to help Bellatrix and hit the dark stalker, Tatterface. Aedann proceeded to kill the Xill sorcerer with a powerful strike.

Isaac shot Tatterface with the inferno pistol as she tried to run Bellatrix through, giving serious damage to the gnome as it was accompanied by an inflict moderate wounds from the dark slayer. Dugald killed Tatterface who then exploded like a fireball, injuring everyone but Eduard.

The fireball took out all but one of the remaining dark folk, causing a sonic explosion and a flash of light. The damage was massive, but the party survived. Aedann killed the last dark creeper and the last flash of light ended the battle. The paty then took a rest, just thankful to be still alive.

[Feros]

Session 12:

The party healed up before looting the bodies and then started exploring the now all but emptied structure. Keeping the timeworn radiation collector active as they proceeded, they went down the hall through which the orcs had come. They entered a large room buzzing with energy. Countless blinking lights, shapes, and strings of writing wriggled across glass panels mounted on the walls, amid an array of buttons, switches, dials, wheels, levers, and other controls.

Six pillars lined with glowing panels supported the ceiling eleven feet above and a circular platform to the east sat under a slowly rotating, semitransparent image of a curious contraption with long arms, one of which ended in what appeared to be an immense, slowly spinning disk. Two windows looked out over a metal platform, which in turn looked out over an immense cavern lit by beams of light emanating from unseen sources below and above.

Rubble cluttered the room’s floor as if pieces of furniture were once affixed to the ground but had long since been torn free, while to the northeast the room’s walls had buckled downward into a crumbled mass of debris. Isaac identified the image being projected as a very large excavator.

Bellatrix asked what the buttons said and Isaac identified one that said in Androffan, “Do not press this button.” He decided to stay quiet about it, but Eduard told Bellatrix what it said. Dugald decided to stand near the button to keep the gnome away. They began searching the chamber and as they did so, they discovered an auxiliary, “Do not press this button,” button.

Bellatrix pushed that button and managed to dodge out of the way of the sparks that flew out of the wall. The writing changed to, “We told you: Do NOT press this button.” Bellatrix nonchalantly walked away, but “accidentally” kicked the button with her foot as she did so.

An image of an alien world with red and green skies flickered to life on a nearby panel. The writing changed to, “Please look at the pretty picture and do not press this button.” Bellatrix looked at the picture and then went and pressed the button again. A barely audible tremor rippled through the floor, as if something distant had shifted or exploded. The writing changed yet again to, “Which part of “NOT pushing the button” do you not understand?”

Eduard got concerned at this point and deliberately mistranslated the phrase as, “OK, OK, go ahead and press the button!” at which point Bellatrix shrugged and moved on. They opened a door on the south wall and found some supplies in a cramped space. They began opening doors going clockwise from that first storage space, skipping the door they came in.

Opening a western door, they found a large cave sprawling to the west of a metal structure buried in the walls. An immense trestle of metal beams and struts extended from the side of the structure and into the wall opposite, while a stone ramp wound from a landing along the side of the structure down into the cave depths below.

The party decided to continue opening doors. The next door led to another cramped supply room, but a monitor on the wall lit up and Hellion told the “blood bags” to leave before he destroyed them all. The next door was yet another supply closet.

The next doors opened onto a large cavern whose proportions were dwarfed by the immense buried structure that loomed over its western half. It appeared to be the massive excavator that the image showed them earlier. A massive mound of furs, rags, and refuse—a nest of some sort—sprawled in a sizable alcove to the southeast. Evidence of recent excavation work was apparent. The beams of the device had been painted with images of demonic faces and spiked mechanical claws, and were further adorned with strips of sinew on which countless humanoid bones have been hung like wind chimes.

A massive two headed giant stood up and charged them. They realized she was Draigs, the ettin member of the Lords of Rust. A nearby monitor flickered and Hellion cast rage on Draigs, making her berserk. The ettin attacked Aedann with her spiked chains and began flensing his flesh from his skeleton. Isaac hurled a concussion grenade at the ettin’s feet and then healed some damage on Aedann.

Bellatrix struck in a surprise attack with her hand crossbow as Dugald hit with Valerie, striking down from the edge of the metal shelf. Victoria cast a touch of fatigue on Draigs, weakening her. Eduard used his wand of ray of enfeeblement on the ettin, further weakening her. Aedann struck the ettin hard but still didn’t kill her before she could strike again.

One head drank a potion of cure serious wounds as the other head directed more attacks to Aedann. Bellatrix continued to shoot from hiding and Victoria got the ettin all the way to exhausted with her magic. Eduard used his wand of scorching ray to finish off the giant.

After looting the body, they moved back into the command center and went to the last door that was locked with a green code lock. They used a green card they got off Kulgara to open it. They found Kulgara’s quarters with a locked cabinet and a primitive orc construct that did not function. Opening the cabinet, they found some valuable gems, tech items, a magic icy burst dagger, and a journal.

The journal revealed that Hellion wanted to use the massive excavator as his body and that he would then use it as a mobile platform to attack a being called Unity in Silver Mount. It also spoke of an android named Casandalee that centuries ago had betrayed this being Unity and took information on the being with her when she fled. Hellion located her last known location as being the town of Iadenveigh.

Hellion wanted Kulgara to mount an expedition to find the device Casandalee took with her (called a “nerocam”) and get information on Unity’s abilities and defences. They then studied the last doors and found more supply closets. They then went back to the schematic in the command center and determined that there was some sort of robots to the east, represented by blue dots. There was also a big red light further east than that. They rested for five hours and Isaac studied the Nalakai’s journal and found that Unity was a danger to everyone far more than Hellion had ever been.

They decided to go north through the mine works to the west to try and reach the robots. The northern wall of the first cave bore a crude cave painting of the xill rising up from a mass of what looked like dead bodies. A dozen real bodies of orcs and ratfolk and a few humans lay heaped against the base of the wall below the painting. The torso of each decaying carcass was split open, as if it exploded from within.

Finding nothing they headed east and found a nest where the xill Zagmaander made her home. They found nothing of value in her shelf nest, and continued on. The tunnels led to where they fought Draigs but on the floor of the cavern, and then they continued through further tunnels to where they saw the blue dots.

Isaac spotted the ambush by the six buffed up observer robots, but the others were taken by surprise. They began trying to shock the party into unconsciousness with stun blasts, but one attacked Aedann with a claw and a laser torch. Bellatrix successfully feinted a robot and got a goof hit with her hammer while Victoria defensively cast acid splash and hit hers while the robots responded with another round of attacks.

Dugald was unable to hit the tiny robots, while Eduard went to full defense to try and protect himself. Aedann hit and destroyed three in a mighty swing. Isaac fired his EMP pistol and destroyed the one hit by Bellatrix. She then moved to get a flank on the one attacking Eduard and destroyed it. Victoria stepped back from the last one and hit it with another acid splash. It attacked Aedann and did a little damage. Dugald then finished it.

They healed up before proceeding. The party then headed south and found an eastern tunnel through the infrastructure of the massive excavator. As they moved through the corridor, they set off a glyph of warding that sonically blasted Aedann and Dugald. They then had Bellatrix go forward to see if there were anymore and to disable them if there were.
There was a second glyph that she managed to disable second one, but missed a third. She took no damage by diving behind the two “meat shields.” After that they proceeded into a chamber beside the infrastructure.

As the party moved out into the chamber near the digging edge, they spotted a large arachnid robot and four scrapyard robots. The scrapyard robots moved to the attack while the arachnid spoke with Hellion’s voice, “You should have heeded my warnings! Now you die!”

Aedann targeted Hellion with his longbow and placed some arrows in the robot’s carapace. Dugald readied for an attack with his halberd and Hellion cast entropic shield to help protect him against arrows and spells. Eduard further recognized that it had a mythic element and could reflect such attacks back on the attacker.

Eduard cast glitterdust on three of the scrapyard robots, blinding two of them. The robots moved in, but that was all they were able to do because of their poor construction. Isaac shot his EMP pistol and destroyed one. Hellion then cast align weapon on his claws, but Aedann stepped in and managed to destroy another two with a single strike.

Dugald moved in to the last scrapyard robot as Hellion cast magic circle against good. Eduard used his wand of scorching ray again and damaged the last scrapyard robot, causing its CPU to malfunction. Isaac shot the last scrapyard robot with his EMP pistol and destroyed it. Hellion swung around the robot’s tail and fired a beam of plasma at Aedann and Dugald, hitting both.

Aedann moved in and damaged the robot heavily and staggered the monster. Dugald moved in and smashed the robot, but the hardness of its body protected Hellion from the majority of the damage. Hellion then attacked and did significant damage with his claws and plasma cannon to Dugald and Aedann. Aedann was grabbed by a claw and held.

Eduard cast grease on Aedann’s armor as Isaac threw an arc grenade and did significant damage. Bellatrix moved in to flank Hellion and Hellion began crushing Aedann and plasma blasted Dugald twice. Dugald was down and almost dead. Aedann slipped out of the claws and struck again, now hard to grab. Victoria healed damage on Aedann as Hellion blasted Isaac with his plasma cannon.

Isaac fired off two shots at Hellion, one hit and one bounced back and hit Isaac. He then healed Dugald with his cure serious wounds from Sarenrae, the last one they had. Bellatrix stabbed Hellion but did little to help. Still, the damage was building up. Eduard, Bellatrix, and Isaac realized that the inhibitor facet seemed to be slowing Hellion down.

Aedann stepped up and managed to do significant damage with his sword. Dugald awoke and stood up, taking a claw attack and smashed into the monster with Valerie. Hellion missed Dugald and fired his plasma damage at Aedann, reducing him close to destroyed. Isaac fired off his EMP pistol again but missed because of the entropic shield. Bellatrix was unable to damage it, but Hellion began to withdraw and escape. The only one of the party in its way: Victoria.

Aedann charged and damaged Hellion as Victoria cast corrosive touch on Hellion through Huginn, but the bird missed. Dugald charged and hit with Valerie, but Hellion stayed up. Hellion then continued to try and withdraw. Isaac stepped up and fired his EMP pistol and caused the robot to explode with a hideous scream, hitting Victoria with a plasma burst.

The party took a few moments to heal themselves to the best of what they had left, then searched the robot bodies for loot. They found two new facet toggles, one enhancing aggression and one enhancing ego. They then headed back, deciding to check out the green, stagnant pool on their way out. They passed through what appeared to have been the dark folks’ lair before they arrived at the pool.

The radiation detector did not register anything, so they felt it was relatively safe to get closer. As they did so, a chuul burst out of the fluids and attacked. Aedann was attacked, but he was immune to the paralytic tentacles and took claw damage. Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement, weakening the aberration.

The party began smashing the monster and the creature soon found Aedann an ineffective target, so it turned its attentions towards Bellatrix. It damaged her, grabbed her, and began trying to pull her back into the green pool. Victoria cast chill touch on the chuul using Huginn but missed. Eduard cast grease on Bellatrix, and she escaped to back away. Dugald and Aedann stepped in and smashed the beast with solid hits, killing the creature.

Isaac determined that the fluids were somewhat like the Numerian fluids that leaked out of Silver Mount, but was far more likely to poison you than affect you like the fluids. Aedann went in as he was immune to poison and searched the pool, but found nothing. Aedann emerged, but found he was able to read the surface thoughts of everyone near. Isaac determined that it would only last a few days.

On arriving back at Redtooth’s Warren, there was a fantastic party in celebration over the fall of Hellion and the Lords of Rust that lasted an entire day. The next day the headed out of Rustwall to return to Torch along with Dinvaya Lanalei coming along to visit Khonnir Baine.

[Feros]

Session 13:

After travelling for five days, they arrived back at Torch. They spoke to the council and explained that the threat from Hellion was dealt with and the forces in Scrapwall wouldn’t threaten Torch anymore. They were congratulated heartily and given the 12,000 gp reward, as promised. Khonnir Baine was delighted to meet once more with Dinvaya Lanalei, and thanked the party for safely escorting her. There was a small celebration and then the party got down to making purchases for the journey to Iadenveigh.

After five days or rest and resupplying, they departed for Iadenveigh on Rova the 22nd. After an uneventful journey, they arrived at the gates of Iadenveigh on Lamashan 1st. A massive rampart of earth and stone stretched along both sides of the road, surrounding the town and its farms. It followed the contours of the land and was crowned with rows of antlers. Visible above the Elkhorn Wall were the spires of a few buildings and a round bell tower. On the northwest face of the hill the stone walls and dark wood trim of a sprawling lodge could be seen.

Iadenveigh was known to the group to have a deep distrust of technology so Isaac kept his hood up as they passed into the town to keep his technological nature hidden. Aedann also kept his nature hidden, as the town worshipped Erastil—a good god of nature and agriculture—the party felt his undead nature would not be welcome either.

As they approached the North Gate, they found a solid wooden pole impaling a smashed gearsman robot with a nearby sign warning visitors that most technology would not be tolerated in the town. This confirmed their knowledge of the town and put the party on its guard. They asked a townsperson where they could find lodging and someone in charge and were directed to the High Home, the large lodge they had seen on approach. The hall served as a tavern, a community hall, a reception area for visitors, and a place for the town council to convene.

When they arrived, they were asked to wait while someone got Iadrin ‘Redfang’ Ashworth, the youngest member of the council and the one responsible for dealing with visitors. They didn’t have to wait long before a man dressed as a hunter with red teeth came up and greeted them. He noticed Isaac and asked if they had any technology with them.

Isaac answered in the affirmative and that he was an android. Redfang complimented Isaac on his honesty and promised to reserve judgement for the present. He also advised the party to keep Isaac on a low-profile—not to lie about it, but to continue as they had done, not mentioning it unless asked.

Redfang then asked what their business was in Iadenveigh. Isaac asked if there were any ruins beneath the town or nearby. Redfang lowered his head in thought before responding, and merely said that strange ruins were scattered throughout Numeria and it is from them that all of the land’s troubles stemmed.

Redfang then said how hard it was to know who can be relied upon, but there were two things the party could do to earn the trust of the Deadeye Council. First, he would like some help in solving a problem with one of the town’s residents; secondly, there was an issue with a possible traitor in their midst that outsiders might be able to handle better than Redfang.

The party agreed to listen and Redfang described a man named Jevik, something of a godless misanthrope and drunk who never really got along well with Iadenveigh’s locals, and so never felt comfortable living within the city’s walls. Jevik’s complaints about monsters, mutants, bandits, and metal men interfering with his farming were something of a local joke, but his latest complains to the Deadeye Council seemed more plausible to Redfang, if only because Jevik seemed unusually sober when he spoke to the council 5 days past.

Redfang had intended to go check on the situation at the farm several times already, but other responsibilities combined with Jevik’s established record of false alarms kept him from it. The party agreed to look into the matter. As they travelled towards Jevik’s farm, they asked about him with the locals. They found that no one had seen Jevik in three days since declaring there was a monster in his orchard. Also they found the man was not well liked.

The odor of pigs hit them before the farm came into view. Visible from a break in a roadside hedge, the house had a wide porch with several chairs. An orchard was partially visible behind the house. A few sheds and pens occupied most of the side yard, but the fencing of the pen had been splintered and the earth churned. There was no sign of pigs or Jevik.

They found the porch splattered with a massive amount of blood. They spread out and began investigating, trying to determine what happened. Isaac found large tracks somewhat reminiscent of a massive bear that headed out into the orchard to the northeast that were three days old. Isaac called out Jevik’s name and in response there was a massive roar from the orchard and the sounds of a huge creature charging at them.

Bellatrix saw trees being pushed out of the way and she hid herself behind a tree that was not in the path of the rampaging beast. Victoria summoned a skeleton warrior to help in the fight as Isaac drank an extract of fire breath and waited. A creature that was a mix of different animals fused together, with a bear’s torso and head, clawed ape legs, and a furred tentacle arm burst out of the orchard to attack. Isaac and Victoria recognized the beast as a yaoguai, a monstrosity born of magic that combined several creatures into one body, creating a deformed, mismatched monster that usually slays and escapes its creator as soon as possible. Victoria shouted out what information she knew as it attacked Aedann, biting the geiswicht.

Eduard tried casting a spell from his wand of ray of enfeeblement on the yaoguai, but was unable to affect the monstrosity. Aedann hit with three powerful swings, but didn’t do enough serious damage to take it down. He did manage to shake the creature up with the power of his attacks. Bellatrix began sniping from her hiding place in the orchard, getting solid sneak attacks in as she did so.

Victoria cast enervation at the yaoguai and successfully sapped its life force. Victoria’s skeleton warrior moved in and attacked in unison to Aedann. Isaac moved in and breathed fire on the monster. As they watched, the wounds on the yaoguai started to close as it attacked Aedann again. It smashed both the skeleton and Aedann hard and its tentacle grabbed the geiswicht. Dugald charged in and smashed the beast with his hammer, but still it held onto its prey.

Eduard cast grease on Aedann and he escaped from the tentacle. Bellatrix continued to snipe from the orchard, irritating the beast. Victoria cast boneshatter but failed to affect the yaoguai. The skeleton hit and Isaac used a wand of inflict moderate wounds to try and heal Aedann. But it was to no advantage, as the yaoguai smashed into Aedann again and took him down to the ground, but not fully dead. Dugald slammed into the monster with a powerful hit with Valerie.

Bellatrix continued to snipe successfully from the trees as Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement successfully and weakened it. Aedann moved around on the ground and got ready to strike from a prone position. The skeleton and Dugald smashed the creature again. Aedann managed to get a critical hit from the ground with his greatsword and Victoria sent Huginn flying in with a vampiric touch and managed to sap life out of the yaoguai.

Isaac shot it with his inferno gun and the creature began to try and flee. Aedann stood up and fired his bow at the creature and the monster fell. But it was still healing so Bellatrix and the skeleton moved in and finished the yaoguai off.

After healing up, they searched the area and found a nest made of shattered apple trees, but no other items or threats. They took the yaoguai’s head off and carried it back to Iadenveigh to report in to Redfang. They got many stares as they return to the High Home. Redfang thanked them for their efforts and presented them with a hearth mantle, a magical cloak that would give them a campfire whenever they needed one as a reward. He also invited them to stay in the guest rooms of the High Home free of charge for as long as the party remained in town on business.

Bellatrix inquired as to where she could by some more bolts for her crossbow as she was running short. Redfang directed them to go to Hands of the Community, a general store and communal storehouse that the party must have passed on their way up the Brow—the name of the hill in Iadenveigh—when they first arrived. Isaac asked about the second task, but Redfang deferred it until the next morning to give the party time to rest and recuperate from their battle.

They went to the Hands of the Community and made enquiries along the way to see if there was any way to get some weapons enchanted in Iadenveigh. They were able to get the bolts but they found no one who could enchant items. There were some magic items for sale and they purchased a headband of vast intelligence and a scroll of restoration. They then returned to High Home and rested for the night.

The next morning Redfang joined them after breakfast and led them to the Ealdorman (the village leader), Ivik Gunnett. They found him relaxing on the porch of his house and welcomed them in a warm and friendly manner. Redfang made the introductions and Gunnett got them some tea.

After a little idle chatting, Gunnett congratulated them for their accomplishments in Torch. News travels slowly to Iadenveigh, but Gunnett tries to keeps abreast of current events as best he can so as to be prepared for all possible complications that might affect the town. Gunnett was interested in any Technic League involvement with the troubles. He’d heard that the party helped to deal with a Technic League spy in Torch which the party admitted they had done; the Ealdorman nodded in approval and brought up his concerns.

Ivek Gunnett has long been concerned that the Technic League keeps spies in Iadenveigh, but with no hard evidence he’s been reluctant to make his concerns public, both out of fear of alerting any spies and out of concern that he could accidently launch the citizens on a witch-hunt. He admitted to having reason to believe a spy from the Technic League was somewhere in Iadenveigh. He needed to know if his fears are based in fact and the spy identified before he took any formal action. He asked for the party’s help in this endeavour.

They accepted and Gunnett presented the few facts he knew. One of the town’s hunters killed a mechanical bird north of town the day before the party arrived. The bird shattered from its fall, revealing a piece of paper stored within. The hunter, a man named Abret, brought the bird and its letter to Gunnett. The paper bore a sketchy map of Iadenveigh with the area of Badwater circled. A message in a strange language was written on the back that Gunnett recognized as the language used by the Technic League, but he couldn’t himself speak it.

The message described how the locals identified the southern springs as the source of the area’s mutations and now avoided it. The afflictions were apparently consistent with mutagenic gas poisoning like those found in Silver Mount. The writer would be cautious in studying the waters as they didn’t want to arouse suspicion. The mechanical nature of the messenger and the casual reference to Silver Mount suggested to Gunnett that the sender was a spy for the Technic League.

Before the party set off to investigate, the Ealdorman repeated his desire to keep things quiet for the moment and not mention the mechanical bird. That way the villagers wouldn’t go off half-cocked and the spy would assume for at least a few days that the message got through. The party should try to learn who the spy is and then return with proof. If the spy attacked or attempted to flee, they should do their best to catch him before he could escape to Starfall.

Concerning Badwater, Gunnett suggested talking to the Bardleighs (a family of stonemasons that quarry rock from Badwater’s western edge) as they might have seen something relevant. Also, if there was a spy in town, chances were good that he or she was a recent arrival. The party were the only travelers staying at the High Home, but Gunnett recalled some six travelers camped in Heddick’s Lumberyard recently. Perhaps they might know something.

[Feros]

Session 14 (Part 1):

Isaac and Dugald went down to Heddick’s Lumberyard to talk to Heddick Widefoot—the proprietor—about the people camping on his land. Heddick was suspicious that they were there to persecute his visitors, but Isaac persuaded him he was just enquiring about camping space for some of his party. They learned that there were six Varisians staying in the lumberyard and that five of them had come together with a sixth that had just joined them. After that, he got suspicious of the questioning and sent them on their way.

Bellatrix decided to investigate on her own and got Aedann to boost her over the wall into the lumberyard. Victoria sent Huginn to act as a lookout for the gnome. Bellatrix managed to sneak in and observe the Varisians with their tents and wagons, them talking and laughing as one woman danced to music being played by another. Then the dancer noticed her and shouted out a warning. Huginn began croaking out a warning too late to be of any help.

Bellatrix bluffed her way into them believing she was just a curious gnome, but they reported her to Heddick and he dragged her back to High Home by the ear. A raven perched on a wagon and laughed in a croaking way as this happened. He dropped her off to the party and told them she wasn’t welcome in his lumberyard.

They tried a different approach: they went down to the afternoon market to buy some general supplies and get to know people. The Varisians warned Isaac to “keep an eye on his gnome” and laughed off any questions asked as attempts to blacken their reputations.

Frustrated with this line of inquiry, the party withdrew and went to speak with Emmina Bardleigh, the matron of the Bardleigh family of stonemasons and investigate Badwater. She was much more friendly and receptive to questions. She apologized for Heddick; the locals tended to blame all problems on outsiders and being friendlier to foreigners made Heddick a bit protective of those in his care.

Emmina explained that the waters that came from the springs where they mined the stone for their work was tainted somehow and that people who had drunk from it had begun developing some form of disfigurement. This was how “Redfang” got his red teeth. As such, they stopped drinking that water and only the Bardleighs continued to work in the area. Isaac asked if he could look into the water source to see if he could determine the cause of the problem and Emmina agreed.

Dugald inspected the stonework and was impressed enough to call it “competent.” Emmina warmly invited him to stay with them for a while and help out; a dwarven stonemason would be a huge boon for them and the Bardleighs could learn so much. He thanked her and said he would consider the offer. The party then went out to the quarry to study the tainted springs. Isaac determined that it wasn’t radioactive and was most likely Numerian fluids, like those out of Silver Mount. Isaac collected a sample of the water and searched the area for a possible access point. He didn’t find an entrance but spotted something shiny on the ground nearby.

He found a finger cymbal, commonly used by Varisian dancers. So the Varisian dancer was now their primary suspect. The party then travelled over to see Ivek Gunnett and tell them what they had discovered. Ivek agreed that official questioning was now called for and got Redfang as well as two members of the Banner of the Stag to join the party on dealing with the situation.

Heddick allowed them in after Isaac presented the evidence, but asked them to not judge them all as guilty. He apologized to Bellatrix for the way he had treated her and led them to the Varisian camp. In the early evening they all sat around a campfire, except the dancer who wasn’t with them. They got defensive and told the party that they weren’t welcome. When Isaac asked where the dancer was, they said that Ilarris was in her wagon and asked why he wanted to know.

When Isaac accused her of being a Technic League spy, the laughed heartily and dismissed it—until Isaac presented them with the finger cymbal and told them where it was found. They became nervous and stated that she had only recently joined them and they didn’t know her that well. They were allowed through with Redfang assuring the Varisians that they were not under suspicion.

They called to Ilarris to come out, but there was no answer. Bellatrix scouted the wagon for hidden entrances and exits as Isaac inspected the door for traps. The door was locked and Isaac used gloves of reconnaissance to view inside but saw only an empty wagon save for Ilarris’ personal effects. Bellatrix unlocked the door and Isaac opened the door to let Eduard cast glitterdust into the wagon.

Before Eduard could get his spell off, a blast of glitterdust came out of the open door covering Isaac, Eduard, Bellatrix, as well as Redfang and his men. Ilarris failed to blind anyone and Eduard managed to reveal her location with his own glitterdust. However, she just appeared as four dancers, having cast mirror image. The dancer stepped out of her wagon and slashed Isaac with a nasty combination of sneak attack and corrosive touch with her scimitar.

Aedann charged in and struck her with the flat of his blade, trying not to kill her just subdue her. However, he hit an image instead causing it to vanish. Victoria summoned a wolf that missed as Redfang and his men fired with their bows, taking out another image. Eduard threw a dagger trying to take out the last image, but missed. Bellatrix moved into a flank and managed to take out the last image.

The wolf moved out of the way and let Dugald charge in and slam Ilarris with Valerie. The spy swiftly moved out of the surrounding attackers and used a wand of lightning bolt on Dugald, Aedann, the wolf, Bellatrix, and Isaac. This killed the wolf and injured all the others except Bellatrix who was able to get out of the way entirely. Aedann attacked as Isaac healed himself and moved out of the lightning line of fire.

Bellatrix charged in, feinted, and took Ilarris down with a nonlethal blow from her hammer. They then tied her up and stripped her of all her weapons, gear, and magic items. Redfang confiscated it all until judgement could be rendered. Isaac studied Ilarris’ spellbook in anticipation of any spells she might have at the ready. They then took her away for trial in the morning.

The next day the trial was brief and final. Ilarris was found guilty of being a Technic League spy and trying to kill the party and Redfang. As such she was sentenced to death by drowning in Longbitter Lake. There was little information that they were able to get out of her other than she had been sent there by someone named Ghartone to investigate the waters. She was executed the following morning.

The party was then introduced to the Deadeye Council and were allowed to formally make their request about investigating any possible ruins below Iadenveigh. Before they could get to the point, however, one of the council—Brother Gahuar Derviec, a cleric of Erastil—asked why they should be trusted when then travelled with an abomination such as Aedann. It had been discovered that he was undead.

Victoria tried to explain that she had power over the undead and that she wouldn’t let him hurt anyone, but all that produced was more consternation over why she had not just destroyed the monster when she found him. She stated that he wasn’t evil—which Brother Gahuar confirmed—and they explained what a geiswicht was to the council. Still disturbed, Brother Gahuar asked if it wouldn’t be more merciful to just destroy Aedann and let his soul rest rather than continue on a vengeful path, possibly forever.

The party stated no thank you, so the council agreed to tolerate his presence until the party’s business was done. But after that they would have to leave as long as they kept Aedann in their presence. Isaac then made the request to search for possible ruins under Iadenveigh. At this point a council member named Hoskit spoke up and wondered if what they were seeking had something to do with whatever happened to someone named Old Skelton. There were nods and murmurs of agreement, and Hoskit went on to explain how Skelton, while trying to dig out an old well, released something from a cave under his farm that killed him—a “cloud of shimmering gas or something.” The council capped the well with a slab of stone and hushed up the event to avoid causing a panic, but the time may have finally come for a more thorough investigation.

Skelton’s farm was located at the northernmost edge of Badwater, the same part of town the Technic League spy was so interested in. By the end of the meeting, the town council approved the party’s request and condoned their exploration of whatever buried ruins might lie below Iadenveigh; they asked only two things: that the party remain quiet about the ruins to avoid spreading fear among Iadenveigh’s citizens and that if there is some sort of danger represented in the ruins, the party would neutralize it. The council promised to reward the party with a +2 construct-bane longbow, as thanks for neutralizing any threat below the town.

Redfang granted the party the gear from Ilarris and on the morning of the 6th of Lamashan they set out for Old Skelton’s farm. They found the abandoned farm with the sealed well. It had a glyph of warding on it, but the council gave them a password to disarm it. Aedann opened it up and they all heard humming as a silver cloud emerged from the well. It was a swarm of nanites and it began to injure Aedann.

Dugald was wearing a swarmbane clasp and Valerie was able to damage the swarm as Aedann exited the cloud and Bellatrix threw a globe from her necklace of fireballs but was unable to damage the swarm. Eduard used his ring of the ram but missed as Isaac threw a zero grenade; unfortunately he caught Aedann in the blast. Victoria used the wand of lightning bolt to further take them down.

The swarm began to scintillate, fascinating Bellatrix and Victoria. It moved over and damaged Bellatrix and Isaac. Dugald moved in but missed it. Isaac healed Aedann a little bit and provided the group with information on what they were fighting. The nanites began shredding Bellatrix’s muscles, reducing her strength. Dugald attacked again and finished off the swarm with two solid hits.

They lowered a knotted rope to give them a way out. They climbed down; except for Dugald Bellatrix’s ring of featherfall and pushed him down the well. They then began to explore the open area beyond. The floor was covered to a depth of three inches with water that had seeped in from the exposed earth. The west wall contained a bank of strange machinery and cracked glass panels. To the north, an open doorway led into another, larger room, but the door’s frame sparked with tiny bolts of electricity.

Bellatrix shorted out the doorway to allow safe access to the next room. There was a rounded desk in the center inset with banks of technological equipment. A large set of doors to the northeast were badly mangled and jammed with rocky debris. A single glass panel with a thin metal frame extended from a desk to the south; this panel slowly flashed with a pulsating white light. A few inches of standing water covered the southern portion of the floor.

Bellatrix touched the flashing screen and an image appeared of the same room, as viewed from above the southern door. A man leaned in over the screen on the desk in the image, then straightened up and nodded his head before speaking to the empty room. He said that they wouldn’t be able to extract any significant information from that location.

A second, much deeper voice replied, asking whether what the man—called Master Xoud—sought could be found in this location. The man nodded again and said that they would have to explore further. He had apparently called upon this second being—named Sahasho—to lead the way in case there were further defences. At that point the man walked away, a swirling of dust and wind following him. The screen then flickered and went dark.

[Feros]

Session 14 (Part 2):
Eduard, Victoria, and Isaac recognized the name of Xoud as that of Furkas Xoud—a Technic League wizard that had disappeared some years before after breaking with the League and isolating himself in his tower in the Smokewood, a place called the Choking Tower putting out large amounts of smoke. They also deduced that he had been travelling with an invisible companion when the images were made.

Bellatrix worked on the doors further into the ruin and found a hand pump to get them open manually without power. With the door open they found a cavernous chamber split into mazelike passages by tall stacks of machinery. The western side of the room was a jumble of stone. Three crushed tubes protruded from under the stone, each as wide as a wagon and capped with a circular metal plate. On the north side of the room was a shattered glass terrarium surrounded by technical equipment. To the south, more machinery loomed amid workbenches scattered with technological parts and several large machines that bore restraints and metal skullcaps.

Isaac suddenly realized that this area held machinery to produce androids. It was all somewhat familiar to him, as though he had been there before. As they explored the room, they were ambushed by four deformed androids, apparently made by the damaged equipment. They killed them quickly, with one detonating a concussion grenade when defeat seemed inevitable. This killed off the last androids and injured the party as well, but not anything they couldn’t heal. They then began exploring the large room more carefully.

They opened a north door after some trouble on Bellatrix’s part to find the door pump. They found an old storage room with a timeworn arc pistol and other pieces of equipment. They went back out into the room and headed to the southern edge. They found the southernmost of the large tube-like machines protruding from the wall had been significantly damaged, but some sort of jury-rigged cover had been affixed to the twisted end. Crusty strings of some sort of residue hanged from the edges of the tube’s cover.

They were suddenly surprised by a second ambush by four more deformed androids dropping down from the tops of the large tubes. They slammed both Victoria and Eduard, severely damaging the two wizards. Eduard withdrew as Bellatrix moved into a flank on one. Isaac healed Victoria a small amount. Aedann moved in and attacked one as the androids struck Victoria and Isaac.

Victoria cast vampiric touch and drained one in order to heal herself. Dugald then stepped up and smashed two of them. Eduard fled and hid as Bellatrix flanked and hammered an android. Isaac healed Eduard again while Aedann sliced through two of them killing one. As they attacked again, the androids were joined by and android with a red scar down the center of her face. She opened fire with a pistol that fired cold damaging energy on Aedann. Victoria used Huginn to attack the newcomer with a chill touch spell. Dugald stepped up and killed two more androids with Valerie. Bellatrix fired her crossbow into the female android as Isaac fried off the arc pistol that flashed brightly as it fired hitting twice with the electrical discharge.

Aedann approached the tube and struck upwards with his sword and wounded her leg. The last android on the ground attacked Dugald but missed as the female android hit him with the cold ray. Victoria cast enervation and depleted the life energy of the female android. Dugald took out the last ground android with a solid hit from Valerie.

Bellatrix lobbed a fireball from her necklace, but barely damaged the sniper. Isaac fired twice, and realized that she was wearing a scatterlight suit, making ray attacks difficult. Aedann hit her again, severely wounding her. She then said in Androffan, “You won’t take my mind! The Dominion can’t have my mind!” She then detonated a concussion grenade, harming Aedann and Isaac as Bellatrix got out of the way.

They healed up and began opening doors off the large room. They found a large room with polished skulls and another that had been set up as a barracks/den. As Isaac walked into the skull room, he realized that it was a repurposed production laboratory capable of providing the necessary supplies for the creation of technological items. The skulls were all androids, all showing signs of deformities. They found three timeworn communication devices, which they kept away from Bellatrix to avoid her breaking them or worse misusing them.

They found some goo tubes that Isaac’s analysis revealed to be edible, but probably would taste foul. They left them behind and moved towards the southwest corner of the large room and found an opening in the rock wall leading onward through fallen rubble. But before proceeding, they decided to check on the tube that had been jury rigged closed.

Isaac opened the tube by dismantling the seal and released what appeared to be rolling masses of carnivorous android flesh. He identified them as hungry flesh, an ooze usually created by magical experimentation, but in this case from technological malfunction. He warned them against piercing and slashing damage, and that it would take acid and fire damage to finish it off. Isaac then threw in a concussion grenade and moved out of the line of fire.

Aedann used his greatclub and smashed the oozing flesh while Victoria hit it with a lightning bolt from the wand. Aedann managed to smash one of the blobs into the ground as they moved to the attack. Dugald moved in and smashed the still active ooze hard with Valerie. Isaac shot the unconscious one with his inferno pistol and Aedann missed. Dugald smashed the last one into unconsciousness and then they used alchemist’s fire and Victoria’s acid splash to finish them off.

Dugald then moved through the opening in the wall after Bellatrix gave the all clear and accidentally set off a crude trap of falling metal shrapnel; however, it couldn’t get through Dugald’s armor. They entered what would have been once the western end of the large room with the tubes. The western half of the manufacturing hall contained immense cylinders, bins, and furnaces covered with dust.

Evidence of an ancient battle was apparent on the walls in the form of scorch marks and broken machinery. The heaped remains of a strange insectoid automaton lay in a ruined heap to the west, partially buried under fallen rocks. The three gearsmen robots stationed here moved to confront the party once they moved well into the area, demanding in Androffan with shrill voices, “Lower your weapons and submit the traitor Casandalee, and you shall be spared.”

The robots ignored the response of the party and proceeded to attack. Victoria fired off a lightning bolt from her wand, seriously damaging two of them. Aedann charged in and slashed into the two robots with a fury. Bellatrix moved into a flank and did some damage, but they moved out of melee and fired their laser pistols. One got a glancing hit on Bellatrix. Isaac began using his EMP pistol to decent effect.

Aedann and Bellatrix moved in and smashed at them with Dugald. After a few more hits and dodges, they managed to smash the robots to debris. They picked up the laser pistols, healed themselves a bit, and then had Bellatrix open the only door out of the room.

They entered and odd shaped room. A line of runes was printed above the two doors on the room’s western walls. Several tattered, strange suits of armor were hanging in shreds from hooks in a wide alcove between the doors. Another gearsman robot was there, came to life and spoke in Androffan: “Primary objective complete. Fugitive exterminated but remains required per Unity directive one. Please submit traitor Casandalee or face immediate execution.”

The gearsman got a critical hit with its laser rifle on Aedann, and then hit him again. Bellatrix tumbled through the room to get to the other side of the robot. Dugald moved in tried to knock the robot down, but failed. Victoria cast acid splash on the robot as Aedann moved in and hit it hard. Eduard dazzled the robot with his blinding ray as Isaac hit it with the EMP pistol.

It fired into Aedann multiple times as Bellatrix attacked from a flank and took the robot down. They looked at the runes above the doors and Isaac said they were in Androffan. The south said “Canister Access,” while the ones above the northern door read “Nanotech Laboratory.” The suits were ruined hazmat suits. They headed north and Bellatrix opened the door.

The walls of the room were lined with dark panels of glass, tiny buttons, and other mechanical devices. A set of metal tanks sat to the west, while a chair mounted on a swivel on a short platform sat to the northeast. To the northwest, a section of flooring had been ripped away to expose a tangle of metallic plates and coils of coloured cables. Two round tables sat in the room’s center. A deep voice then spoke, “Have you word from my master?”

Isaac recognized the voice from the images they saw when they first entered. He talked to the being he now recognized as an invisible stalker, bound by Xoud. Xoud told Sahasho to remain there and guard the room while he returned to his home with a body via teleportation. The wizard had promised to return in a few days, but he never did. Isaac promised to help Sahasho leave in return for any information he might have.

He told the party that he had taken the body of a woman with him and that was the reason for their explorations. Xoud had called the body that of someone called Casandalee. He knew that there were large cannisters to the south with gasses that were used in this room somehow. The stalker had opened up the “power conduit” on command, but no power could actually be used.

Isaac investigated the gas cannisters, and realized they were a biohazard. They were gasses used for nanite production. The leaking cannisters undoubtedly were what were responsible for Badwater. Isaac and Bellatrix jury rigged up a power system into the conduit and dealt with the gasses, processing them and ending the threat to Iadenveigh. They then safely shut down the facility to keep more deformed androids from being created.

They promised to return to free Sahasho when they were done with investigating Xoud, and left the crashed ship. They met with the Deadeye Council and reported what they had found and done. Relieved at the end of the threat from Badwater, they rewarded the party the bow as promised and wished them luck with dealing with the Choking Tower.

[Feros]

Session 15:

There was no nearby crossing of the Dagger River, the party decided to take a day and build a raft with a crossing rope to cross, then left it behind to act as a ferry for Iadenveigh. The Bardleighs began building docking points for the new Iadenveigh ferry and promised free passage for the party whenever they needed it. They travelled for five days and arrived at the edge of the Smokewood on the evening of the 11th of Lamashan.

They located a clearing that had been made into the woods. They camped overnight and then examined the clearing in the morning to discover it was a pathway made by a fairly large number of hill giants within the last two weeks. They carefully followed the trail into the Smokewood and they the middle of the next day they heard some grumbling up ahead in a language no one in the group understood.

Isaac snuck up to a large clearing where three hill giants were camped. They were having an argument of some sort. Isaac and Bellatrix crept up hidden while the rest of the party approached openly. The giants greeted them and said in Common that they wished to talk. Isaac moved out into the open and joined the party, leaving Bellatrix hidden. Eduard decided to perform some magic tricks for the giants’ amusement and they were impressed, bringing about applause.

The giants asked for the party’s help. They had been a much larger band, but had uncovered a “metal monster not far from their current location and it had decimated them. If the party would kill it for them, they would reward them with some gear they couldn’t use, including a “magic sword that cuts metal like flesh!”

The party agreed, but they were secretly somewhat skeptical and prepared for possible betrayal. They described the monster to the party as large metal on two legs with arms with claws and big sound weapons. The party proceeded to a large field nearby and found a huge hole excavated in the ground guarded by what Isaac identified as a warden robot, a rather dangerous and powerful mechanical menace.

Aedann and Dugald charged in, but the guns did some damage as they did. The robot also emitted an infrasonic field that could nauseate any who approached, but Dugald was able to get there unaffected. Bellatrix hid in the woods, but the robot was able to spot her through the foliage. Eduard cast support spells and tried to blind it with his magic as Victoria summoned some skeletons to help Aedann and Dugald then moved into position to hit it with a lightning bolt from her wand. She sent Huginn in to cast corrosive touch on the robot.

Eduard used his ring of the ram to great affect with a critical strike. Aedann and Dugald were badly hurt, but the machine was on its last legs when the giants betrayed the party and attacked. They smashed Isaac heavily before the android withdrew into the tree line and hid. Eduard cast mirror image on himself and tried to keep out the giants’ way. The skeletons were smashed as they moved to support the others.

Bellatrix hid in the trees and began sniping the giants. Aedann was heavily hurt but stepped in and sliced into the giants, killing one and damaging another. Isaac took down the robot with a blast from his EMP pistol before healing himself with his wand of moderate wounds. Eduard cast glitterdust and managed to blind the two remaining giants. Dugald took down another giant and heavily wounded the last. Bellatrix moved into a flank with Aedann using her hand axe. The giant responded by taking down Aedann—killing the geiswicht for the day—and took down Dugald with his second strike.

With the fighters down, the party became very concerned. Bellatrix used a feint on the giant and managed to sneak attack with her hand axe as Victoria cast boneshatter on the giant and finally killed him.

After the fight, the party healed up, buried Aedann to let him rise again and then searched the field and the bodies. They determined that the giants had excavated the robot and got smashed. On the giant chieftain they found a pink rhomboid ioun stone, a rust bag of tricks, and some other items. They then returned to the giant camp and looted it, finding a bag with a half-eaten gnome wearing boots of striding and springing—which Bellatrix took with an “Ewww!”—and an animated light wooden shield.

They also found a crude map of Smokewood that marked the giant camp, the robot clearing, the Choking Tower, and a glade marked by a large drawing of a butterfly. A corner of the drawing had a short plan of attack written in Giant which Isaac used his linguistics abilities to interpret: “1. Get metal thing’s weapons; 2. Test weapons on big bug; 3. Use weapons on Technic League; 4. Revenge!”

It was late in the day and they wanted Aedann back so they rested until morning. Overnight Bellatrix had a dream in which she was in a glade at sunset, the stars were spectacular. A voice spoke to her asking for her to come to her as she needed her aid. When Bellatrix asked what she needed to do, and she saw a silhouette of a massive butterfly against the moon. She was asked to come and speak with her again, and then she woke up.

The next day (the 14th), Bellatrix said they should go to the glade marked with the butterfly at dusk because of her dream. When Aedann rose from the ground, Isaac & Victoria went to work repairing his body and they rested until sundown. At the glade they found a large amount of bioluminescent glowsap and they were met by a massive moth that Isaac identified as a star monarch, an enormous colorful moth that serves as an emissary of Desna and a guardian of dreamers.

The star monarch introduced herself as Longdreamer and she offered them aid if they would help satisfy her curiosity about the nature of the Choking Tower. Although she had not been able to explore its interior, she did know that there are creatures within who dream—in particular, she warned them of a particularly violent mind whose dreams were of “ravenous carpets of flesh-eating worms feeding upon the body of a man—always the same man—whom the worms knew as Furkas Xoud.” She attempted to communicate with the dreaming worms, but the worms’ response had been nothing but hostility—she knew that whatever this mind might be, it harbored a deep resentment for all life, but none more than Xoud.

The fact that no other creature seems to dream within the Tower further aroused Longdreamer’s curiosity. In return for satisfying her curiosity the star monarch offered up her cave as a safe place to rest. Further, she offered the use of her spell-like abilities to the party. She could use dream to send messages to distant allies and use restful sleep on party members who sleep nearby.

Finally, Longdreamer offered her aid in travel. She could carry the party on her back and could give the party a unique and swift means of traveling across Numeria. They agreed and asked Longdreamer to escort their horses and wagon back to Iadenveigh with a note for the Deadeye Council to take care of them for the party while they were away. They all agreed that Dugald would have to be sedated for these journeys, as he was deathly afraid of heights.

The next morning Longdreamer flew them swiftly to the Choking Tower, then flew off to escort the horses and wagon back to Iadenveigh. The towering stone structure rose above the tops of the trees. The towers walls were made of metal and stone and stained black with soot, its roof a metal cone crowded by a forest of pipes and chimneys belching smoke into the sky. The tower’s few windows were narrow and slatted with metal grills, and its only door was a metal rectangle with rounded corners, twelve feet high and nine feet wide. The door had no knob or handle—only a two-inch-wide hole in the center, the edges of which were bent as if something had been wrenched free. A large number of immense footprints covered the ground surrounding the tower.

Dugald identified the prints as hill giant and saw that they headed toward the giants’ camp. Isaac inspected the hole in the door and they realised that the spit turner at the giant camp might fit. Sure enough a short jaunt later and they had the door mechanism. Isaac was unable to get it to work, but Bellatrix soon had it rigged up correctly, allowing them to open the door to the tower.

Beyond the door a grand hall ten feet wide and twenty-five feet long stretched. Three metal doors were in the walls at the opposite end. The middle door was slightly smaller than the others and a metal wheel was mounted in the center of each door. Isaac and Bellatrix checked all the doors in the hall for traps and to see if any of them were locked, but they found nothing suspicious and they all seemed unlocked. They got Dugald to open the southern door.

The wedge-shaped room beyond the door contained several storage racks and crates, as well as a sickly odor. A large alcove to the southwest contained a spiral staircase, leading up. Two humanoid robots wielding hammers and shields activated and moved to the attack. Isaac identified the robots as riot suppressors, who generally go for capture rather than kill. Aedann charged in and began tearing the robots apart. Bellatrix moved in behind to flank with Aedann and struck into the vitals of the robot. With her axe.

Dugald moved in and Isaac hit the damaged robot with his EMP gun, but Dugald missed wildly allowing the robots to retaliate. The robots hit Dugald and Aedann, but using nonlethal damage against Aedann proved futile. Victoria cast acid splash as Aedann took down the damaged robot, then slashed the second. Bellatrix moved to flank the second and ripped some cables with her axe. Isaac hit the robot with an EMP pulse, destroying it.

They searched what appeared to be a storeroom with spoiled food and found a box with some batteries. They returned to the hallway and Aedann began opening the door at the end of the hallway. The door slammed open into the geiswicht and the whole party got blasted by pressurized burning oil. Most of the party were able to get out of the way of the blast—Aedann had the advantage of being slammed behind a door—but Victoria, Huginn and Dugald were all injured by the boiling mess. They saw that beyond the door were just a bunch of venting pipes and nothing else of interest.

After resting a short time and healing up, the party shut the door and Dugald opened the door opposite the storeroom, revealing a curving hallway decorated with schematics mounted in elaborate frames. The schematics featured images of metal monsters, strange vehicles, and technological wonders. The hall curved north at the eastern end, rising to the upper floor in a staircase.

As they proceeded into the hallway, Bellatrix noticed what appeared to be smoke pouring out of one of the schematics on the wall, forming into the rough shape of a man wearing robes with red fire streaming from his eyes and surrounded in smoke. Isaac identified it as some sort of incorporeal undead and threw alchemist’s fire into it for no effect. Dugald was unable to connect and Bellatrix moved in to help Dugald by distracting the apparition. Eduard activated his ring of the ram and hit the spirit hard with his force goat. The spirit cast fireball into the group producing a nasty blast that nearly killed Huginn, who went down.

Aedann struck the spirit with his greatsword, but much of the damage from the magic sword just passed through. Victoria tried to command the apparition but was unable to get control. Isaac healed Huginn, saving the familiar’s life. Dugald was unable to affect the spirit which Victoria now identified as a ghost. She warned the party of its corrupting touch, that it could do terrible things depending on the nature of the ghost.

Eduard and Dugald had no effect and then the ghost filled the hallway with a smoky mist. It then snarled, “Leave my home, intruders!” before seeming to vanish into the mist. The party now realized that they were facing the ghost of Furkas Xoud. Aedann began to heal in the mist which seemed to be filled with negative energy. He swung with his sword, but Xoud was gone. He warned everyone to get out of the mist. The rest of the party were sapped by the mist before getting back into the entry way. Aedann stayed in until he was fully healed, shortly before the mist dispersed.

After healing up the rest of the party, they cautiously re-entered the hallway. They went through the smoky hallway to where two doors opened off the hall. They opened the western door and observed a kitchen. A search for traps by Isaac and Bellatrix revealed that the room was a set up as a trap and that they should avoid it to avoid a blast of fire out of the stove. They found harmless mould in the sink, and nothing else. They carefully left the room.

They crossed the hall and opened the door on a library with wall shelves crammed with books and scrolls. A large desk cluttered with scrolls and papers sat at the western end of the room. A metal door led to the north stood ajar revealing what appeared to be a reading nook. Bellatrix decided to search the nook while Victoria discovered a green leather covered spellbook on the desk using detect magic.

Bellatrix found the back of the reading nook contained a low bookshelf with a few papers on it and an overstuffed leather chair. The room was coated with a thin layer of dust and had a slightly sweet smell. Eduard cast detect magic on the room and found no magic. Bellatrix searched the room for traps, but found nothing.

As soon as Bellatrix entered the room the door slammed shut behind her and locked. Vents in the ceiling began flooding the room with a magical gas. Bellatrix immediately fell asleep. At this point the party came over to the rescue. Isaac searched the door to see if it was trapped, but found it was only locked. He began trying to unlock it, but was a miserable failure. Dugald began trying to bash the door down with Valerie.

Bellatrix managed to shake off the effects of the gas temporarily and woke up, but was still groggy. She searched the room and found nothing of value. Dugald managed to smash open the door, freeing Bellatrix just as the gas began to dissipate. They found nothing else of value in the library, though the notes on the desk were about mist and smoke magic, the most recent being 30 years old.

[Feros]

Session 16:

Bellatrix scouted ahead and went up the spiral staircase (after much debate and hemming and hawing) and came to an open room with many doors. Displeased with having so many choices—and consequent work searching for traps—she returned down the stairs and proceeded up the curving stair without any explanation to the rest of the party. There she found a landing with a single door to her right and a short hall to two doors on her left. The curved stairs continued on up past the landing. Much better—far less work.

The rest of the party came up the stairs after Bellatrix listened at each of the doors and heard nothing. Isaac and Bellatrix searched for traps and found nothing. Dugald opened the right hand door and found a broken down washroom with working toilet and bath with hot and cold running water. Bellatrix flushed the toilet for fun before moving on.

They searched the left hand doors opposite the washroom, and Isaac and Bellatrix found they were trapped. After snipping the connecting wires they let Aedann opened up the doors, and found they had been attached to the steam tubes that had scalded them below. The area beyond proved to be the many doored chamber Bellatrix had tried to avoid earlier. With a sigh, she and Isaac began searching for traps systematically and opening doors in a clockwise direction.

They found that each room was an abandoned barracks, but they didn’t have long to search as Isaac shouted out a warning as three clusters of debris and mechanical parts with metal skulls hovering above clanging messes with grasping arms attacked Dugald, but missed. Isaac identified them as gearghosts, trap making spirits of thieves killed by other traps. They would reform even after destroyed so long as any traps remained active within 100 feet of their remains. Isaac hit with his inferno pistol but failed to do any damage.

They began flying by and attacking, but they did little damage. The party mostly waited until they moved into position to strike, and Aedann struck hard but was unable to take any out. The fight descended into an annoying series of strikes and readied counterblows until Aedann and Dugald took them out with a few well-placed hits.

After searching each room, they looted a number of minor valuables until they found a supply closet with a strange fist sized cocoon latched to the wall above the highest shelf apparently made of wires and metal ribbons. Isaac identified it as a protective shell made by a cloud of nanites to keep them from degrading until they can be used. They got Dugald to pry it off the wall and gave it to Isaac to carry in the hopes it could be of use later.

They ascended to the next level and found another atrium with a balcony overlooking from the level above with the curved stairs continuing to that level. There were four doors, one unmarked and the other three reading: “Lab 1: Alchemy,” “Lab 2: Fluid Siphoning Research,” and “Lab 3: Gaseous Ooze Research.” A foul smell filled the area and a large bird-like creature that appeared to be all head with four legs came down the stairs and attacked them while another peered over the balcony from above and breathed black smoke on the party.

Everyone in the cloud started having their skin melting off their bodies except for Aedann, whose geiswicht body was immune. Victoria cast wall of bone to try and keep the one coming down the stairs out of the room, keeping it out. The wall began grabbing at all beings adjacent, including Eduard and Aedann. Eduard and Aedann got grabbed and injured, but not the bird creature.

Aedann broke free as Dugald hurled a throwing hammer up and hit the second bird-beast. Isaac identified them as achaierai, foul creatures of the lower planes, specifically Hell. The achaierai outside began trying to break through the wall as the one on the balcony breathed on them again and prepared to jump down on the party.

Aedann hurled Bellatrix up to the upper balcony and she successfully feinted the beast and made a precise strike to its body. Eduard struggled to escape from the bone wall as the achaierai broke through. Victoria summoned four skeletons to help Bellatrix with the fiend on the balcony. Dugald charged the bird monster that came through the wall and managed to smash it to the ground.

Aedann stepped in and killed the downed achaierai with two strikes. Bellatrix continued to use flanks and sneak attacks to wear down the beast on the balcony as Isaac grabbed Eduard’s hands and helped him out of the bone wall. The remaining achaierai began tearing into Bellatrix, seriously injuring her.

Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement on the monster, but it proved resistant to the spell. Dugald smashed the rest of the bone wall, freeing them to mount the stairs and come to Bellatrix’s aid. Aedann went up the stairs to help Bellatrix, but she didn’t need the help: she immediately killed the beast as he arrived.

They headed back down and began exploring the floor with the first three labs. They checked the door without any signs and found a corridor to a spiral staircase going up where they found a second nanite cocoon which they collected and gave to Isaac to carry. They then investigated the alchemy lab and found a corridor that could only be passed through with one door open while the other remained locked. Isaac deduced it was some form of airlock for safety purposes.

They passed through, waited just less than half a minute, and then passed into the lab. They found a number of items such as pharmaceuticals and gear as well as a foul chemical odor. The next lab had what appeared to be a large laboratory coated with a thin greenish slime. One desk was heaped with pages of notes and a human skeleton dressed in moldy robes slumped over it. A large glass tank atop the easternmost table was shattered and shards of glass littered the floor while a pale green haze floated in the air.

Aedann and Bellatrix entered with Isaac entering the airlock next. A black clawed entity arose from the corpse and moved to attack them. The apparition was babbling as they moved to fight it and Bellatrix became fascinated by the noise. Its touch began damaging Aedann’s sanity, beginning to destroy the geiswicht’s mind. Aedann slashed through the incorporeal creature with his magic greatsword and disrupted the creature.

As they began breathing a sigh of relief, the green vapor coalesced into a green fog with images of skulls and dead people moving in it. It engulfed Bellatrix and Aedann, staggering and taking Bellatrix down while healing Aedann. Aedann swung his sword around, trying to damage the fog. Isaac entered the room and was engulfed. He declared it to be a hungry fog, a negative energy attuned living creature and that it was vulnerable to wind. He used his wand of cure moderate wounds to heal Bellatrix.

Bellatrix moved out of the fog as quickly as she could. Isaac began taking damage from the hungry fog as Aedann struck as hard as could and finally slew it. They searched the laboratory and found the body’s voidfrost robe and a wand of gust of wind. The notes on the desk showed a researcher descending into madness before smashing the jar and joining with the hungry fog. Her spellbooks were among objects stacked on the table.

In the Fluid Siphoning Research Laboratory, something had smashed the furnishings to pieces. The fragmentary remnants had been arranged into spiky piles throughout the room, while at the far side the bones of a long-dead dwarf were in a mangled heap. As Bellatrix, Aedann, and Dugald entered, a miasmal form emerged from the body with barbed tentacles coming out of the central mass, coalescing into razor-sharp talons and claws.

The thing attacked all three of them and began trying to grab them with its claws, catching Bellatrix; she was able to escape. Aedann and Dugald began slamming the gaseous creature with sword and hammer as the creature successfully grabbed Bellatrix who escaped yet again. Victoria, Isaac, and Eduard made it into the airlock and Victoria cast a ray of enfeeblement through the window and weakened the creature.

The two warriors continued to attack and damage the creature as it finally got a solid hold on Bellatrix and managed to pin her to the ground. Isaac identified it as a mihstu, a form of air elemental that drains blood. He shot at it through the window with his laser rifle, but missed terribly. Victoria cast enervation through the window and supressed the life energy of the elemental. The mihstu began draining Bellatrix’s blood, flushing bright red as it did so. Aedann took one more swing and finished the monster off before it killed the gnome.

They searched the lab and found some gems and an pale blue rhomboid ioun stone on the dwarf. They gave the ioun stone to Dugald, healed up to the best of their ability and then proceeded up the stairs to where Bellatrix killed the achaierai. Three doors stood in the east wall, but only the central door was intact, with “Lab 4: Animal Research,” written above it. The northern door had a hole burrowed through it, while the southern one had been smashed apart.

They went into the southern smashed airlock. Both doors to this room had been battered outward and hanged askew on their hinges. The furnishings within were smashed to pieces and pushed into a large nest. They found a corpse with an all tools vest, which Bellatrix immediately claimed in spite of being too small. She began discussing with the wizards about the skills necessary for modifying the vest to fit.

They checked out the animal research laboratory and found a foul smell filling the room. The room was crammed with metal cages and boxes. Much of the metal in the room was twisted and gnawed with the remains of several dismantled metal automatons on the floor. Two eight-legged beasts with golden fur were tearing apart a fallen robot and stopped to look up at the approaching party. They growled and then readied for an attack.

Dugald recognized them as aurumvoraxes—also known as golden gorgers by the dwarves—and dangerous pests for miners. Victoria started off with her wand of lightning bolt on the gorgers as Bellatrix hid amongst the wreckage. From there she started sniping the aurumvoraxes. Aedann moved in to fight and the gorgers attacked, grabbed, and almost destroying the geiswicht before he even got to swing his sword.

In spite of his wounds, he managed to severely damage both of the two beasts. Eduard cast phantasmal killer on the beast with the worst wounds but failed to kill it. Dugald charged in and hit the heavily damaged gorger with Valerie and killed it, squashing it flat. Victoria moved into a position where she could use her wand of lightning bolt and Bellatrix hit with a sniping shot and disorienting it at the same time.

The aurumvorax took down Aedann before he could swing again as Eduard attacked with a wand of ray of enfeeblement but missed and Isaac did a little damage with his inferno pistol. Dugald was unable to get a solid hit as Victoria cast grasping corpse on the dead aurumvorax, grappling the other. It then began tearing into Dugald, but it was unable to break free from its partner’s corpse. The rest of the party did small amounts of damage until Dugald finally got a solid hit and Victoria killed it off with a boneshatter spell.

[Feros]

Session 17:

After healing up, the party checked the last door and found a corridor to a spiral staircase down. They used the staircase to retreat from the Choking Tower and buried Aedann back at Longdreamer’s lair. While in the ground, Aedann found himself in a dream for the first time since his original death. He was hunting in the fields outside the village where he had lived with his fellow militia members. Then he awoke in the dirt, eight hours after being buried.

After repairing Aedann, they returned to the Tower in the early evening and proceeded back up to the layer above the floor with the aurumvoraxes. They found a door that had been chewed through leading to a wide, curved hall ending in a metal hatch with a large slate board covered with neat lettering hanging on the east wall between the hatch and a flight of stairs heading up.

After checking the chewed door for traps, they moved into the hallway and inspected the slate. The slate described the various laboratories and the research that had been done in each lab. They determined that they had discovered half the labs, and that Lab Zero: Mnemotechnic Recovery was most likely where they would find Casandalee, as “Mnemotechnic” indicated recovering memories from a technological source.

They tried to open the door, they found it was arcane locked. Unable to find a way around the magical barrier—including trying to break it down—they proceeded on up the stairs. There they found an open space that spanned the diameter of the tower and opened to a room above in the southern half. There were three massive forges that burned and vented into the cluster of pipes running through the center of the tower. A tangle of conduits cut through the room to join this cluster, and formed a wall of pipes and thick wires. Three riot suppressor robots moved to attack the party as they emerged from the stairwell and they ordered what appeared to be four dwarves with flaming hair and beards to join them in the attack.

The three riot suppressors managed to hit Dugald with their hammers as he was the only one to enter the room at the start of combat. Bellatrix tumbled through the robots and flanked one with Dugald, striking it in its vulnerable joints. Victoria summoned a small water elemental to attack the fire dwarves should they come into the fight. Isaac recognized the “dwarves” as azers, beings from the elemental plane of fire. He jumped up and into the room, flanking with Dugald. He struck with his rapier after studying the robot and managed to create a crack in the robot’s armor.

Eduard began performing stage illusions to show strategic approaches to battle, inspiring his compatriots on to greater success. Aedann was moved up and smashed the robot struck by Isaac. Dugald hit that one and bounced Valerie through to hit a second one with a massively powerful strike which utterly destroyed it. He hit the first robot a second time and destroyed it as well. He hit the third, but it was only a solid hit. The azers saw this and joined the party in taking on the riot suppressor rather than joining in the assault. The riot suppressor continued to try to take down Dugald, but failed to make too much of an impact.

Bellatrix further messed with the remaining robot’s gears as Victoria sent Huginn out to apply a corrosive touch, but the raven missed as the water elemental struck the robot to no effect. The azers struck with their hammers, but did little damage. Isaac fired in with his EMP pistol and caused the damaged robot to explode to the cheers of the azers.

Isaac healed up Dugald as the party talked to the azer smiths. They explained that they had been brought to the Choking Tower by Furkas Xoud for solid work, but they had been essentially prisoners there ever since Furkas died and they were too frightened of his robots and ghost to try and flee. They didn’t know much about the rest of the Choking Tower, but they did know that the locked door downstairs was Xoud’s personal quarters.

As they talked about their desire to work at crafting metals, Bellatrix mentioned Torch and the azers got very excited; they especially admired the craftsmanship on Bellatrix’s hourglass. The azers decided that they would head to Torch once they left. They told the party about a crane on the next level that lifted their work up to the next level through the opening in the ceiling to the upper labs. They only knew of the names of the labs because of the markings they had to place on all of their work.

They released the azers who thanked the party profusely then headed out of the tower to travel to Torch. They searched the forge, but found nothing of interest. They travelled up the stairs and found a small landing with two doors. Isaac checked over the doors and both were easy to open and clear. They went through the door leading towards the centre of the tower and they found various raw materials and lab supplies on a balcony overlooking a workshop. A large iron-and-mithral swivel crane perched at the edge of the balcony, its boom long enough to reach the stores and lower them down into the foundry below.

They stepped back and checked the other door and found a storage closet filled with weapons and shields. Some of the bolts proved to be magical so they looted the closet before going out onto the balcony with the crane. As soon as they entered the room fully, the crane activated and began to attack the party with its hook and boom.

Victoria identified the crane as an animated object, a construct without intelligence. She then cast lightning bolt from her wand at it as Bellatrix moved into a better position and fired her crossbow, but she missed. Aedann moved in and used his construct bane longbow to attack, dong some significant damage. Isaac confirmed Victoria’s identification and hit it with his inferno pistol right before the crane slammed into Aedann and hooked him. Eduard began encouraging the party with his inspirational performance and complimented the strategies coming from Isaac. Victoria fired off another lightning bolt as Dugald charged in and got hit by the boom but made it to the crane. Bellatrix helped Aedann get free of the crane hook while Isaac hit it with his inferno pistol twice more.

Eduard cast grease on Dugald to help him stay out of the crane’s hook. Dugald slammed it and Victoria missed with a corrosive touch, the crane proving very resilient. Bellatrix moved in to aid Aedann and Dugald. Aedann used his greatsword and did significant damage as Isaac reloaded his pistol. The crane smashed into Aedann and hooked him again, so Eduard cast grease on Aedann as well.

Victoria cast another lightning bolt as Dugald smashed it, as Aedann escaped the hook. The crane managed to hit Aedann and hooked him again. Eduard cast web on it, bunging up the works as Victoria blew it apart with a final lightning bolt. They then began exploring the balcony and found another door with a sign indicating that it was “Lab 6: Technic Research.”

They checked the airlock for traps and then they healed up before moving through the airlock into the lab itself. The walls of the laboratory were white with a partially disassembled mechanical man spread across a desk. The automaton’s lower half was intact, but its arms were disconnected from its torso and its torso and head were both spread out in their component parts. A hatch led out of the room to the southeast.

They found some valuable circuitry from the dismantled robot as well as some valuable precision tools. They searched the chamber but found nothing more and so proceeded to explore the hatch to the southeast. They opened the door and found the upper halves of eight robots hanging from hooks in the ceiling of the narrow room. At the far end of the room, Isaac and Bellatrix spotted another nanite cocoon attached to the wall.

Dugald and Aedann moved into the room to retrieve the cocoon. As they hit the halfway mark, the dismembered robots began to flail about and attack the two fighters, knocking Dugald prone. As het hit, a drum on the back wall let out a boom and the dwarf suffered more pain than he should have. Isaac and Bellatrix started working together to try and disarm the trap as fast as they could.

Dugald stood up and was promptly knocked flat again. He decided to roll out instead. It then knocked Aedann down but he was unaffected by the booming drum. He stood up and began smashing the robots with his sword. Once more Aedann got knocked flat, the robots tearing at him as he fell. Dugald rolled out of the room, battered to within an inch of his existence. Aedann stood back up and began smashing the robots again. Isaac finally cut the last wire and shut down the trap.

After repairing the two fighters, they entered the room and collected the nanite cocoon. They also picked up the magic drum. They identified it as a nuglub-skin drum, and after discovering that it just added pain to nasty falls, they decided that it was a totally useless magic item.

They went up to the next level and found three more labs: “Lab 7: Quasi-Gaseous Research,” “Lab 8: Swarm Behavior Studies,” and “Lab 9: Smoke and Particle Research.” They decided to investigate Lab 7 first and went through the airlock. They found wooden barrels the size of humans, each barrel capped with a wooden lid and its rim crusted with dried blood. A desk near one wall had notes scattered atop it, and almost humanoid-shaped bloodstains adorn the floor in several spots. Isaac identified the bloodstains as deceased vampiric mists.

They went on to Lab 8 and they found a largely empty chamber, save for a few metal barrels. Both barrels had jagged rents on their sides, as if some caustic material had melted a hole through them. Shimmering shapes and hypnotic waves of color appeared as the party entered the room, causing Huginn and Victoria to become fascinated. Eduard snapped them out of it using tricks and glitter. Isaac identified them as bionanite clouds but they seemed to be non-aggressive.

Isaac spoke to the clouds in Androffan and asked if they could talk to him with a flash for “yes” and no response for “no.” They responded affirmatively and then he asked permission to search the lab. The clouds assented and then the party searched the lab and found one fragmentary surviving note covering an idea on entering a cloud in the same way intelligence had somehow gotten into worms that walk. Isaac asked the clouds if intelligence had been uploaded to them, and they had no response.

They moved on to Lab 9 and found several shelves and desks along the northern and western walls of while in the center stood a large contraption made of several concentric metal rings surrounding a thin metal mesh in which was cradled a black ceramic bottle with a cork plugging its top. They entered the room and smoke moved out of the corners and formed into a demonic creature with red glowing eyes.

The creature flew by and attacked Aedann with its claws and Isaac identified it as a belker, an elemental creature made of smoke. They are known to hate djinn, so Isaac popped the cork of the bottle. Smoke came out of the bottle and formed into the ghost of Furkas Xoud, looking quite shocked. They then had to fight both the belker and the ghost.

Furkas filled the entire area with a misty shroud that damaged everyone but Aedann with negative energy and then hit the party with a fireball, severely damaging Huginn and Victoria. Aedann began being healed by Furkas’ mist and attacked the belker with his greatsword and began shredding it. Dugald also attacked the ghost and just barely hit with his second hit. Victoria and Huginn went down due to the negative energy emanating from Xoud’s mist.

Vision was now completely obscured by the smoke. Eduard figured out that the bottle was an eversmoking bottle and as such there was no way to get rid of the smoke. Eduard quickly rifled through Victoria’s gear and picked up the wand of gust of wind. Bellatrix fumbled forward and picked up the eversmoking bottle and stuck it in her bag of holding and called out that she had done so. Eduard cast a gust of wind and began opening up the visibility in the room and dispelling Furkas’ miasma.

Isaac healed up Victoria, and Xoud cast mirror image and then there were six of him. Aedann downed a haste extract given to him by Isaac and then attacked the belker with everything he had, killing it. He then stepped up to Xoud and took out one of the mirror images. Dugald took out another two images. Victoria stood up and cast disrupt undead on Xoud and took out another image. Bellatrix actually hit Furkas, but did little damage.

Isaac gave Bellatrix his wand of cure serious wounds to try and heal Huginn and then attacked Xoud with his rapier to little effect except he took out the last images. Xoud cast cloudkill and filled the room with poisonous fumes. All of them except Aedann were poisoned and Huginn died. Aedann then attacked hasted and shredded the ghost with his magic sword and then Dugald smashed him with Valerie, but they still couldn’t do enough damage to dispel him. Victoria followed it with another disrupt undead that dispelled the ghost at last. Eduard used the wand of gust of wind to help the party get out of the cloudkill without further loss of life.

Isaac figured out that Furkas appeared when they touched items important to him, so looting them would help put the ghost to rest. They decided to leave the room to heal up and figure out what to do next. Victoria also had the sad duty of burying Huginn.

[Feros]

Session 18:

Eduard figured out how to shut down the eversmoking bottle and stopper it. After observing the bottle and realizing how attached Xoud was to his possessions, Isaac deduced that because of Xoud’s Technic League research destroying all the robots in the Tower might help put the ghost to rest.

After healing up they proceeded up the stairs into the top floor of the tower. There they found two humanoid robots with four arms each working in a large laboratory of some sort that filled the area under the conical roof. They asked if Furkas Xoud required their aid in extracting information from an android’s brain. Before they could answer, Aedann charged in and struck hard. With two powerful blows he heavily damaged one of the robotic apprentices.

Dugald charged in and tried to knock one down, but was unable to. One of the robots cast web on the rest of the party, but was unable to entangle anyone. The other cast stinking cloud over the web, but was unable to nauseate any of the party. Those in the zone of the webs and cloud took electrical shock damage from the robots’ spells. Bellatrix moved out of the cloud and web and hid behind the smoke stacks leading to the roof. Isaac shot the badly damage robot with two shots from his EMP pistol then moved to the edge of the web and cloud.

Eduard and Victoria moved out of the cloud and web near where Bellatrix was hiding. Aedann hit the damaged robot with another solid hit followed by a massive blow that sliced it in two and smashed into the second one. Dugald swung wild and missed. The remaining robot cast glitterdust on Aedann, Dugald, and Isaac, but failed to blind any of them, though they took electrical damage from the robot.

Bellatrix snuck around into a flank and stabbed the robot as Isaac attacked with his rapier, moving out of the gas and web. Isaac identified as a variant on a clockwork mage, a construct with spell-like abilities. He let the rest of the party know so they could take tactical advantage. Aedann and Dugald smashed the robot hard, but it was Eduard that finished it off with a chord of shards spell being made of sharp, weaponized, glitter.

They looted the tower lab and among the many items they found a rod of horacalcum, a rare coppery sky-metal that affects time. It was magical with a faint abjuration aura and they decided it was some form of magical key. The party decided to head down to Xoud’s quarters and try to unlock the door.

The magic key was unable to unlock the arcane locked door, but Bellatrix and Isaac worked on it and managed to open the door. They entered a chamber appearing to be a combination of bedroom and study.

A window to the northwest let in light and air and tapestries depicting gloomy landscapes and gothic architecture hung on the walls. A bed sat in the room and a small desk against the southwest wall was bare. Doors provided several exits—although no handle adorned the door to the northwest. Instead of a handle or knob, it had a small plate of coppery metal.

As they began to search, Furkas appeared to pour out of one of the tapestries on the wall and filled the room with his miasmic smoke. This hurt the party members with negative energy except for Aedann who was healed by it. Furkas Xoud let out a shout which damaged the party with sonic energy. Bellatrix attacked the ghost with her hand axe and managed to force him out. Victoria used the wand of gust of wind and dispersed the miasma.

After Xoud retreated, the party searched the room and Isaac found a hidden switch behind a tapestry depicting a rural graveyard. He pressed it and opened a secret shelf in the wall. This shelf contained three of Furkas’s spellbooks, each bound in green leather. They took these and took an inventory of the spells for the wizards.

Bellatrix opened the southeastern door and was awash in a wave of water that had filled the bathroom from a leaky pipe. The room was mostly ruined except for three bottles of rare cologne which the party took. The northeastern door opened on a room containing a large desk and bookshelves. A metal hatch led to the east with a thick glass window set into the door. Several black hoses led from the door to a large machine against the northeast wall.

A gasping wail emerged from the far end of the room, seemingly from the machine. Isaac heard labored gasping from the hatch room. As Isaac moved to investigate, a cloud of gasping ghostly forms made of smoke surged out of the chamber to shroud him. They entered his throat and began to suffocate him. He tried to leave the room, and they followed.

Victoria identified it as some form of haunt and Isaac declared between gasping breaths that positive energy would damage it. Victoria cast disrupt undead over and over to try and dispel the haunt temporarily. Dugald began being affected by the haunt as well. Isaac shook off the effect and he and Victoria moved out of the area. Eduard got pulled in, but was able to keep the haunt at bay to some extent. But Victoria and Eduard—using the wand of cure moderate wounds—caused more positive damage and finally dispersed it.

They found the body of a Technic League agent (identified by his pin) that had been suffocated in the decompression chamber beyond the hatch. Apparently Furkas Xoud studied the effects of various forms of suffocation on many victims. Isaac deduced that the machine was responsible for the suffocations and thus for the haunt, so Dugald and Aedann smashed the machine ending the threat. They found some cybernetic implants on the body which they took, though they were unsure whether to have them implanted in anyone.

They then investigated the door to the northwest and found the coppery disk in the center of the hatch was horacalcum. Isaac touched the rod they found at the top of the tower to the metal plate and the door opened immediately, revealing a spiral staircase going down.

At the bottom of the stairwell they found a hallway carved from natural stone and polished smooth. They followed the hall and came across a door in the western wall as the hall continued on. They opened the door and found a single wooden desk and chair in the northeast corner.

In the desk they found a wand of wind wall and a journal filled with detailed notes about the various creatures Furkas often conjured. The final pages contained anatomical drawings of a peculiar black fly, along with the devastating effect of the swarms of these flies on living flesh. Isaac identified the fly as the type exhaled by leukodaemons, servants of the Horseman of Pestilence.

Isaac described a leukodaemon and the party agreed they would just as soon not encounter one if they could help it. They moved through the room to the far door and opened up and found a vast chamber, the western half containing an immense magical circle etched into the stone floor, its curves and runes glowing softly with magical radiance.

Inside the circle was a large, human-shaped beast has a horse’s skull for a head. It had cracked hooves for feet and bore the rotting wings of a carrion bird. Isaac identified it as a leukodaemon. It called itself Cavavenchian and promised the party great gifts and wishes if they would free him. As they remained doubtful but continued to try and engage the fiend in conversation, Xoud manifested within the chamber. He released the daemon from the magic circle by using telekinesis to break its boundary.

Cavavenchian attacked the party; Bellatrix was able to get the drop on the daemon with a silver bolt from her crossbow though. Isaac reiterated the way to fight the daemon and threw a flechette grenade at the monster. It fired its bow at Bellatrix and nearly skewered the gnome with two shots. Aedann charged and began slashing at the daemon with his greatsword.

Eduard began using magic tricks to explain tactical approaches to fight the daemon, inspiring the others to greater skill. Dugald charged in and smashed the daemon, knocking the fiend flat. Both Dugald and Aedann smashed the falling monster with solid hits. Eduard prepared to use his ring of the ram as soon as the daemon stood up. Bellatrix moved in and got a sneak attack in with her axe as Isaac drank an iron skin extract and moved in to fight.

The leukodaemon breathed out a cone of flies that affected Isaac, Aedann, and Dugald; Bellatrix was able to avoid by diving out of the way. The flies began tearing the flesh off the bodies of the three adventurers. He moved back and stood up and Eduard fired off his ring of the ram and slammed the fiend hard, killing it. The ghost had remained to watch the battle, but vanished with laughter as soon as it finished.

They healed up and the searched the chamber but found nothing of further interest. After leaving the chamber the continued to follow the hallway and found another door, it led to a small hallway that had another door that led to a large chamber. An iron balcony was on the south side of the chamber, the floor of which was 20 feet below the balcony itself. A massive circular fan was on the east end of the chamber while the west end was marked with a spiral pattern of runes. The fan turned slowly, creating a mild draft throughout the room. Several cords connected the fan to a panel affixed to the east end of the balcony. In the chamber were three belkers, enjoying floating on the breeze.

The belkers attacked as Isaac and Eduard moved to the control mechanism, strapped in using rope, and began upping the wind speed on the fan, hoping to make life difficult for the belkers. Sadly, the belkers were unaffected by the massive wind but not the party. Dugald and Aedann were blown back and fell all over the place, reducing their effectiveness in combat to attacks as the belkers flew by. Bellatrix was essentially out of the battle as any ranged shots couldn’t work in the intense wind.

Victoria used her wand of lightning bolt to wear them down as Dugald and Aedann smashed and slashed at them at each opportunity. The belkers kept slashing and harming Eduard, Isaac, Aedann, and Dugald then flying away. They used the wind in the tunnel to help with their attacks. Realizing his error, Isaac and Eduard began turning the dial down. One of the Belkers even went through the runes in the back wall before coming out of the fan.

Isaac identified the runes as allowing the passage of air from the western end to the eastern end of the chamber. Dugald finally took down a belker by waiting and striking as the monster passed. Then Victoria killed another with a lightning bolt as Isaac finally got the wind machine off.

Isaac then began using his inferno pistol to shoot at the last belker. Aedann took out his bow and began firing at the belker as Victoria killed it with a lightning bolt.There was some discussion of killing Isaac as the healing was performed, but they decided they needed him for healing.

[Feros]

Session 19:

After healing the party proceeded down the hall cautiously, searching for traps as they went. They turned a corner and found two doors leading off the hall to the east while the corridor turned to the west beyond.

They went through the first—northernmost—door and followed another hallway. This was followed by an architectural discussion as to whether or not it was more properly called a “corridor” or “hall”. Dugald got sick of it and went to the end and another door. After searching it for traps they opened it to reveal a stone room with walls adorned with carvings horrible accidents. A stone altar at the east end of the room had a heap of bones of various shapes and sizes.

Victoria recognized the room as a shrine to Zyphus, the god of accidental death and tragedy. Given that the followers of Zyphus use traps to kill people in senseless deaths, the party assumed there was a trap in the room somewhere, even if they couldn’t locate it.

Isaac and Bellatrix moved slowly into the shrine, searching each step for a sign of a trap. Suddenly, the bones on the altar knitted together into a lash that swept across the entire chamber, slashing into Isaac but missing Bellatrix entirely. The trap appeared to be held together with some sort of goo that kept it animated and active.

Isaac identified it as a deathtrap ooze, a reddish brown slime that could take the form into any mechanical trap. Isaac managed to throw a grenade at it as he began to withdraw. The blast damaged the ooze, but not by much. Victoria summoned two skeletal champions to fight for her, but they did little damage.

Aedann used his longbow to shoot at it and Eduard used his performance to inspire courage in the group. Bellatrix moved out of the way to allow Dugald to charge in and strike the ooze with Valerie, hammering the ooze. The ooze struck again with its lash, hitting everybody but Victoria and critically striking Eduard and Bellatrix. The deathtrap ooze then reverted to its normal form.

Isaac hit it with his inferno pistol as he further backed out of the room. Victoria cast ray of enfeeblement at the ooze, but missed. Aedann moved in and struck the thing with his sword as Eduard withdrew a little. The ooze got hit by Dugald, but it lashed out and grabbed Aedann.

They proceeded to attack it hard again and finally killed the ooze. They then spent some time healing up before searching the place. They found a fourth nanite cocoon behind the altar and took it with them. They found nothing else and so moved on.

They went to the southern door back in the main hallway and found another corridor turning back and forth and proceeding east. As they moved down the hall, Dugald noticed that a ten foot wide section of the southern stone wall appeared different than the surrounding wall.

Isaac used his gloves of reconnaissance on the section after searching it and finding no secret doors. On the other side of the wall was a long corridor heading south that appeared long abandoned. They decided to leave it until later and proceeded on to another door and another room.

This room contained a desk and three large windows looking into narrow cells. The window of the northernmost cell was shattered outward and the cell within empty. The middle window was intact, the floor of the cell inside was strewn with a carpet of dead insects.

The third window showed a mass of writhing worms which, upon being observed, moved together into the form of a humanoid figure. The mass said his name was Nargin Haruvex and he demanded the party release him so that they might enjoy knowing they aided a superior being. When the party proved reluctant, he insulted them for being cowards and shining examples of lesser forms of life.

The party didn’t take the bait; Isaac identified Nargin as a worm that walks, the spirit of a dead wizard inhabiting the bodies of the vermin that consumed his corpse. Eduard and Isaac said that if Nargin was able to aid them in their quest, they would be willing to release him. The worm that walks was pleasantly surprised and apologized in a condescending way for his rude behaviour; he was used to adventurers who were all bravado and ego.

Nargin revealed everything he knew about Furkas Xoud to help the party get rid of the bastard for good. He mentioned that Furkas was particularly proud of his smoke furnace, a magical device that powered the entire tower. Shutting it down would undoubtedly help rid the place of the wizard’s ghost.

He also told them that Furkas brought the body of an android named Casandalee to his most secure lab, and that the door utilized nanites as its locking mechanism. Isaac began to suspect that the nanite cocoons would be of help with the lock.

Nargin revealed that he heard Furkas mention a “thought harvester,” though he was not sure exactly what that referred to. Additionally, Nargin’s cell contained a nutrient training node which served as the primary food source for the worm that walks. Nargin had figured out the pattern to gain a bonus to his Intelligence from the node and explained how the device worked to the party.

He also warned them to be careful of the worms in the jar on the desk; he wasn’t sure what they were, but Xoud had done some experimenting and changed them from what were once parts of the worm that walks. Grateful for the information, the party released Nargin as promised. He thanked them and left, asking the party to kill Furkas “for good this time,” as he left.

The worms turned out to be short term memory enhancers that were a cross between hellfire wasps and worms; useful if a little disturbing. After finding nothing else, the party left the room and went towards the final door off the main corridor which would lead to the final lab.

The party found a cramped, hot room choked with hissing pipes and sparking wires. A strange machine of metal, stone, and crystal ground and whirred a cacophonous din, with smoke and fire churning out of it into dozens of pipes that extended through the ceiling. A huge metal door sat at the southern end of the west wall, just to the side of the machine.

Above the door was an inscription: “Lab Zero: Mnemotechnic Recovery.” Numerous cables and pipes extended from the door’s frame to a nearby panel in the southern wall from which four glass domes the size of human heads protruded.

With the information from Nargin, Bellatrix and Isaac were able to shut down the smoke furnace. The door unlocked when Isaac approached it, as the four nanite cocoons unraveled to free the clouds within. The freed nanite clouds immediately filled each of the four glass domes on the panel, lighting up numerous lights and causing a quarter of the cables attached to the door to glow and hum.

They opened the door and entered Furkas Xoud’s most important laboratory. The metal-walled laboratory was sparsely furnished and the air within is stale and musty. A long table against the north wall of the room contained the almost perfectly preserved corpse of a woman with bluish circuitry on her skin. The top portion of her skull had been cut away to reveal a dry, pale brain. On the floor at the foot of the table lay sprawled the withered body of a man, portions of his remains completely missing as if burned away.

The most striking thing in the room was a robot with rows of crystal spheres lining its back with four-legs. A single glowing eye sat in the middle of its head. Isaac identified it as a thought harvester robot, designed for extracting memories from the living and the recently dead. The robot attacked, shooting Aedann with a sonic blaster. Furkas Xoud arose from his corpse and filled the area with his miasma. The ghost then cast solid fog to make his miasma more formidable.

Bellatrix moved in slowly through the fog and attacked Furkas with her axe. Isaac fired his EMP pistol into the robot as Aedann moved as far as he could and charged through the solid fog to strike at the thought harvester. Victoria used her wand of gust of wind to try and get rid of the miasma as Eduard waited on a discussion about the plot of the movie Top Gun being discussed among the party members’ guiding spirits to finish. {The previous metagame comment added upon request} After that nonsense was finished, Eduard used his ring of the ram to damage the robot.

Dugald attacked Furkas with Valerie after a charge. The robot grabbed Aedann as Furkas caused Valerie to be stolen from Dugald by the fog and hid it. Furkas cast phantasmal killer on Dugald and the dwarf saw his family as undead abominations trying to kill him coming out of the fog. Although horrified, he was able to strengthen his resolve and keep going.

Bellatrix attacked with her axe as Victoria moved around to get a better position and summoned a ghast and two ghouls and sent them in to attack the robot. The fog was dispersed by the gust of wind as Isaac shot at the robot and missed. Aedann drew his dagger and struggled to escape from the robot’s grip.

Eduard began an inspiring performance of his magic. Dugald used his magic light hammer on the ghost instead of going for Valerie. The robot began crushing Aedann and attacked Victoria’s ghast, destroying it. Furkas cast irradiate and began poisoning Dugald and Bellatrix with powerful radiation.

Bellatrix survived and hit Furkas with her axe and managed to disrupt the ghost. With the three factors to put Furkas to rest achieved, the ghost was put to rest. Victoria cast another gust of wind to dispel the fog in the lab and Isaac fired his EMP pistol into it. Dugald picked up his earthbreaker Valerie and moved to help Aedann.

Aedann smashed the robot with his dagger and did enough damage to take down the force field around the mechanical beast. The thought harvester robot attacked and damaged Aedann. Victoria cast lightning bolt, killing the ghouls and damaging the robot heavily. Eduard cast grease on Aedann as a defensive measure. Isaac shot the robot in the now clear room with his EMP pistol thrice.

Aedann broke free as Dugald charged in, Victoria cast another lightning bolt into the robot twice more—exhausting the wand—as Eduard continued his inspiring performance then moved in and used chord of shards to damage the robot with weaponized glitter to little effect. Aedann used his greatsword and Dugald Valerie to try and bring the monster down, but failed.

The robot fired off its sonic rifle and began taking down Isaac as it attacked Dugald with a needle into the back of the skull. Isaac healed himself with a cure moderate wounds as Dugald began having his memories pulled from his skull. Bellatrix moved in and hit with a sneak attack. Victoria cast boneshatter on the robot and did heavy damage. Eduard tried a blinding ray, but missed. Aedann smashed the robot one last time and finally broke it into a thousand pieces.

After the fight, they searched the area and found Casandalee’s gear and Furkas’s equipment as well. They found a small clear globe filled with green mist attached to a small, portable speaking unit; when Isaac pressed the only button present, the globe replayed half of a stored conversation with Casandalee’s brain; only the androids responses were recorded for some reason.

They learned that her knowledge was recorded on a neurocam she hid during her flight from Unity. She hid the neurocam in a cave in a Y-shaped valley, many days’ walk northeast of Iadenveigh. Local tribes have long called the place the Scar of the Spider.

[Feros]

Right. Will be getting the three missing sessions off in rapid succession. Here is the first:

Session 20:

Having taken the Choking Tower completely and put Furkas Xoud’s spirit to rest (or the Abyss most likely), the party claimed it as their own. They decided to fix up the Tower, repair some technological devices, make some items, and sell off excess equipment. Victoria took the opportunity to summon a new familiar.

They also talked to Longdreamer about what happened in the tower. She was glad to have her curiosity satisfied and that the party returned intact. She flew them to Iadenveigh with Xoud’s head to free the invisible stalker Sahasho, who was most grateful for the courtesy and gave the party control of the nanite lab.

Longdreamer took them to the city of Hajoth Hakados to sell some of the more expensive items and get the harder to get items on their shopping lists. It took thirty-seven days to accomplish all their work, including opening up the secret exit from the dungeon.

Victoria was surprised to discover her newly summoned familiar was Huginn, now elevated to the status of a psychopomp, a group of outsiders in service to Pharasma that work to ensure that the natural cycle of life and death is not disrupted. Huginn was now a nosoi, a psychopomp that resembled a raven wearing a doctor’s mask. He could also resume his original raven form as he wished. After scolding Victoria for her careless disregard for his existence, he resumed his post as nag and conscience to the necromancer.

By the 22nd of Neth they had the Choking Tower repaired, cleaned, and fit for living. Longdreamer flew them to the Scar of the Spider. She landed near the valley’s entrance but refused to come closer: she felt the dreams of something dark and terrible that frightened her. The party moved on to the canyon with some trepidation.

The cliffs on either side of the half-mile-wide canyon rose six hundred feet to forested heights above. Below, the valley floor was filled with boulders, strewn rocks, and patches of tenacious shrubs and weeds. The dark waters of a river flowed down the valley’s center, while sprawled in the waters near the valley’s entrance was the smoking bulk of an immense mechanical arachnid.

Aedann reacted violently to the fallen robot, charging to the attack immediately even though it was apparently destroyed. Isaac identified it as an annihilator robot, an incredibly powerful automaton with devastating weaponry that have been killing and capturing people throughout Numeria for the past few years. Aedann and his village had apparently been killed by one.

Isaac studied the battlefield and found that two annihilators were in the battle that occurred a week before, the second heading back into the valley. A huge blast had felled the broken robot and heavily damaged the second. They found a twisted cage filled with dead Kellid barbarians, all with the tops of their skulls removed as well as their brains.

As Aedann finished smashing the robot, a hissing sparking sound came from within. Bellatrix and Isaac both realized that the power core was unstable. Bellatrix shut down the core and vented the plasma in a 5-foot-wide column of fire into the sky.

As they moved on into the valley they found a cave filled with webs. They found a bunch of massive spiders keeping their distance. The reason soon became clear: a gargantuan spider moved in and attacked the party.

Isaac explained it was simply a massive tarantula with hairs it could fire at its targets. Isaac then shot it with his newly repaired sonic rifle as Victoria fired of a ray of enfeeblement to weaken it. Aedann charged forward and struck hard and Bellatrix moved in to flank and sneak attack. Dugald charged in and slammed it under its head, knocked the spider into the air, it landed on its back, and then Dugald killed it with a massive crushing blow from Valerie.

As they recovered from the battle, they were greeted by a strange man with a wild, unkempt appearance. The lower half of his left leg was gone and replaced by some sort of metal limb. He complimented them on slaying the monstrous spider and introduced himself as Paeytr. He invited them back to his cave to talk and give them a rest.

Paeytr led them to a cave entrance at ground level of a high bluff. The opening was hung with strings of bones, twigs, bits of metal, and tiny fetishes. Before the cave were gardens of strangely colored vegetables and fruits. A few fruit trees grew nearby, shielding the view of the garden and cave entrance save from the east.

Paeytr warned them not to take any vegetables or fruit without his guidance, as the ground was poisoned by the “Butchers from the Dark Tapestry.” Isaac recognized the term “Dark Tapestry” as a phrase used by worshippers of Desna in reference to the spaces between the stars. Paeytr had worked hard to purify the poisonous ground and had some success. Isaac asked the mad hermit why he came to live in the Scar of the Spider. He claimed to be a druid of Gozreh who came to help aid the plants in their distress. He had made some headway before the Butchers came down and did far more damage.

Paeytr offered them some good food from his stores to help them out and guided them to which plants were safe and the benefits they might bring. After they finished their harvest, Isaac continued to talk to Paeytr about the valley and the threats therein.

Paeytr told them he had been taken by the Butchers shortly after they arrived and that the brain collectors had given him over to “flayer”, a strange woman who injured him and took his leg. The flayer was from the shadows, a being of pain and darkness. He described the flayer as a strange woman covered in sharp chains. Eduard identified her as possibly a sacristan kyton, a dangerous fanatic dedicated to pain sometimes referred to as a “chain devil”, even though they are not devils at all. They had a howl that could overwhelm the minds of those who hear them.

Paeytr told the party that the Butchers’ vessel was by the source of the western river and their hive lair was in the cliffs beyond. Isaac recognized that the torture he had undergone had fractured his mind. It would take a full restoration spell to heal the druid’s mind.

Paeytr mentioned that there may be others in the Scar who might be able to help them. There were some people who lived in a cave to the southwest. They were strange, but they had a distrust of technology marked them as trustworthy. Another man had come recently, but he had “the stink of the rifts”. He had asked Paeytr about some Technic League agents who visited the Scar months before. He was seeking them, but as an ally or enemy Paeytr didn’t know.

Then he spoke of a four-armed lady, the strangest of the non-Butchers. She fought against the Butchers but she worked with machines and used them. She lived in a machine cave so Paeytr did not trust her, yet you might. She was eager to kill the Butchers and was the one that destroyed the annihilator they found at the entrance to the Scar. Isaac speculated the four-armed lady may in fact be a kasatha, one of the aliens whose undead bodies they had encountered under Torch. This one appeared to be alive.

Isaac then asked about the Technic League agents that had passed through. They had come months before and had questions about the machines. They were rude to Paeytr, but left him alone once he told them the machines served the Butchers deeper in the Scar. They were angry that the Butchers controlled the machines. They talked about confronting the Butchers, but didn’t return.

The party decided to check on the Kasatha first to see if she could be an ally. Anyone who could take out an annihilator robot would be a great asset. They thanked Paeytr and set out through the first forest in the valley to pass over to the other side where the “Machine Caves” lay.

As they passed through the wood, they found a corpse laying at the base of a tree. The corpse was heavily damaged and ripped apart. The corpse was a woman wearing robes and lying on a backpack. Eduard cast sift on the corpse, but found most of the gear ruined. There was a strange object encased in ice along with what appeared to be frozen flesh. Looking more closely they found the object was a silver dagger.

Isaac and Aedann approached the body and Isaac determined that the dagger was made from siccatite—a sky-metal that was either very hot or very cold when purified and shaped. Eduard moved in and cast detect magic and found the dagger and some objects in the backpack were glowing. Before they could investigate further, the party was surprised by two strange creatures that were hiding as trees on either side of the tree over the corpse. These six-eyed creatures looked something like dead trees with claws, tentacles, spidery legs, and mouths bulging with tentacles.

They fired off a psychic blast which damaged Isaac and Eduard, rendering Eduard confused. Bellatrix moved in to provide flanks and attack as Victoria summoned some skeletons to help out. Isaac figured out that these creatures were yangethes, alien creatures created by enigmatic beings known as the Dominion of the Black. They travelled across the stars and lived off the emotions of sentient creatures. The second yangethe hit Dugald and Bellatrix with another psychic blast, confusing Bellatrix as well.

As Aedann and Dugald moved in, Bellatrix was grabbed by one of the creatures and held as Dugald smashed into it with Valerie. Aedann was able to get free and began carving them up. Bellatrix injured herself as Victoria cast bull’s strength on Dugald. Isaac used his studied strike to decent effect and helped Dugald out with tactics.

Eduard and Bellatrix were both grabbed at this point and Bellatrix kept hurting herself until she was unconscious. Dugald and Aedann finally did enough damage that the two yangethes teleported away, saving themselves. The party healed up and then proceeded to loot the body for the few magic items before moving on to the Machine Caves.

[Feros]

Session 21 (Part One):

As the sun began to set on Neth the 22nd, the party arrived at the entrance to the Machine Caves. The mouth of the cave had a number of natural pillars on its right-hand side. Gray-green lichen covered the entry’s arch and an odor of burned oil drifted from inside. There were various odd scuff marks in the soil and grass. Isaac called out a greeting in kasatha, but got no response. He studied the entrance for traps and discovered a concealed tunnel heading north away from the main cave. The party decided to check that out first.

The tunnel led to a low-ceilinged cavern with another tunnel out the other side. What appeared to be some sort of technological weapon sat on the floor in the middle of the cave. As they moved forward, Bellatrix called out a warning and pointed out that there were several triplines attached to two arc grenades. She then moved forward and disabled the triplines, collecting two arc grenades. The weapon turned out to be a mock-up of a zero rifle, but was just useless junk. The party moved on.

The tunnel opened into a small cave, with another tunnel exiting the chamber to the northwest and the way filled with a pool of water. There was movement from the exiting tunnel and a voice called out for them to leave in Androffan. Isaac responded in kasatha that they came in peace. The person gasped and she responded in kasatha, amazed that anyone could speak her language. Isaac explained their mission to discover a neurocam left behind by an android. They had sought her out as they felt she might be able to help them and they help her.

She sighed in relief and invited the party in to her redoubt. They crossed the shallow pool and passed into a cave split in two by three rock columns. A small device hummed in one corner warming the air. Beyond a series of rock pillars to the south was a deerskin pallet on a bed of evergreen boughs. A pile of berries, mushrooms, and freshly cooked small mammals sat on a bolder being used as a table.

As the day was effectively over, she invited them to stay the night. She introduced herself as Isuma, a kasatha who travelled to Golarion on the starship Divinity long ago. She needed allies as her kin were killed by the Dominion of the Black that resided to the west. She needed help in getting vengeance on them and in return she would help the party as best she could.

As they ate and relaxed, Isuma told them her tale. Humans came to her world and she was invited away from her home to learn their language, their weaponry and technology and promised to eventually return her and the others home so that they could share what the humans taught them with her people.

But Divinity was attacked by creatures who identified themselves as the Dominion of the Black. The ship escaped but it was damaged and society aboard broke down; Isuma and her kin were forced to defend themselves from mutineers. Through the conflict they learned that others on the ship had abducted members of another kasathan tribe and were keeping them as pets in a large contained habitat, but she and her fellow tribemates were unable to rescue them.

The ship began to shake apart and they sought shelter in stasis pods in an escape shuttle—devices intended to sustain life over long journeys. They entered the pods and hoped the escape shuttle would take them home—but that shuttle crashed to Golarion along with the rest of Divinity. They woke only recently, thousands of years later, as captives of the Dominion.

Isaac asked about the Dominion of the Black and how she managed to escape. Isuma described them as consisting of several species of creatures. She didn’t know the names of the creatures, but they use sapient beings’ flesh, particularly brains, as resources. Some are large, crablike, and collect brains for use as magical batteries of some sort. Others are smaller and shaped like brains themselves and use bodies—one of them she described as a sadist named Maukui, and said that it wore a huge, breath-stealing reptile as its suit.

Maukui was the one who tormented the kasatha survivors and would have killed Isuma had she not escaped. They came here in a vast, decaying organic ship that lay heaped on the shores of the lake to the west. Isuma had not been into this vessel, but she thought there might be resources within that could aid them in an assault on their hive.

It was in the hive that she woke after a reprogrammed annihilator robot found their four intact and functioning pods and returned them to its masters. Isuma was the last one to be woken from her sleep and after a few days of torture at the hands of Maukui the fiend got lax and she was able to grab a number of technological devices including her aurumvorax hide armor and she then escaped from the den in panic.

Isuma couldn’t recall details of the layout of the hive, but she did remember that the doors of the place were valves of flesh that required organic keys to open, and that the walls of the place could see and hear, but were able to be tricked by certain chemicals. Isuma tricked them by virtue of being coated with the blood of a Dominion agent she had slain. The other kasatha that had been with her now lived a blasphemous half-existence as Dominion puppets.

Isaac asked about further details of the Scar of the Spider and Isuma provided a crude map of the valley when provided with paper and ink; she knew about Mad Paeytr and the yangethes they drove away. She also described the people who rejected technology as androids, which struck everyone as odd as androids were themselves a form of high technology. She then pointed out a fungus-encrusted cave, the dominion dropship, and the dominion hive. She said she suspected there was a dangerous, poisonous creature dwelling in the swamp to the southwest, but hadn’t explored that area yet.

She then pointed out that the other half of the caves where they were currently were colonized by some sort of mechanical army. Isuma couldn’t get past the robotic guardians to explore the area more fully. She suggested that an exploration of those caves would give her and the party a chance to learn each other’s tactics while simultaneously finding more tools to aid their mission.

When they complimented her on taking out the annihilator, she modestly admitted she simply set a trap for them using plasma grenades. It was only half effective—she wanted to take them both down, not damage one and destroy the other.

She then asked them about the neurocam they were looking for, what it looked like and what it does. Isaac described the device and that it held information from an android named Casandalee who opposed a dangerous AI that had once been a part of the Divinity. Once she heard Casandalee’s name, Isuma’s eyes widened. While the kasatha was a prisoner in the Dominion hive, her captor Maukui interrogated her, demanding to know what she knew of a woman named “Casandalee”—specifically, if her mind was the only “disembodied organic” in the region. The Dominion obviously knows something and may be holding Casandalee captive.

Isaac asked about the Fungus Cave and Isuma said that she had not been inside, but she had seen the creatures that dwelled within—as large as humanoids but winged, with insect-like limbs and bulbous heads that flashed strange colors. They had strange weaponry and spoke in buzzing voices. They seemed to be enemies of the Dominion, but they did not seem interested in alliances: Isuma was nearly killed when she approached them.

After resting the night, they proceeded out of the small tunnel and proceeded into the main cave. It was a large space, with stalactites descending from the ceiling. The floor was irregular and a large pool of water hugged the northwestern wall. Three natural columns of rock supported the ceiling in front of the pool. A broad passage headed into the caves to the southwest, with sounds of clanging metal and the smell of burned oil coming from that direction.

In the center of the cavern was a hideous monstrosity, a crab-like nightmare with a lamprey mouth, eyes on its legs, and several empty blisters along its back. This, Isuma explained, was a brain collector she had killed and strung up here as a way to frighten off would be interlopers from the Dominion. Isaac identified it as a neh-thalggu, an alien from the dark tapestry.

They proceeded to the southwest and found a large pool of murky water in the center of a cavern. The shores were surrounded by a mess of metal and mechanical debris. A broad passage exited the chamber to the west, its surfaces smooth and covered in gray metal. A long-dead body of a woman lay near the southern wall, partially buried by the rubble.

Only Aedann failed to notice the three small, hovering, metallic spheres with spinning blades, long needles, and crystal-tipped rods studding their surfaces moving to the attack out of the debris piles. Isaac recognized them as torturer robots. They attacked Isaac, Dugald, and Aedann, injecting them with nanites, sickening Isaac and Dugald and damaging Aedann.

Isuma fired her zero rifle and struck one of the robots with an icy sheath, but it failed to take down its force field. Bellatrix moved in past the robots as Dugald attacked but his powerful swing missed. Isaac managed a studied strike, but only managed to mildly damage the force field as Victoria cast acid splash, but missed. Eduard began an inspiring performance to help the party with courage.

Isaac, Aedann, and Dugald got struck with the whirling blades of the robots, doing significant damage. Isuma managed to take down the force field on one of the robots. Bellatrix tried to feint the robot but failed, and did little damage. Isaac pointed out the weaknesses and Dugald smashed one finally. Aedann got a critical strike with his greatsword, tearing a hole in the side of the robot and stepped sideways towards Dugald.

Victoria moved into a spot where she could hit two with a lightning bolt from her wand. She destroyed one and shut down the third robot’s force field. Eduard used an acid splash while continuing his performance. One of the robots was able to make Isaac nauseated; in response the second one moved in and attacked Isaac, paralyzing him.

Isuma hit again with two shots as Bellatrix tried again to get a feint and successfully got in a sneak attack against the robot, destroying it. Isaac used his nanites to throw off the paralysis, then Dugald and Aedann struck the robot with two strong blows and smashed it to smithereens.

[Feros]

Session 21 (Part Two):

The party healed up and then they went up to the body and investigated. They found ruined equipment as well as some gold minted in Alkenstar. A magical pistol and a wayfinder were also there, and the picture of a handsome man wielding two pistols was in the lid of the magical compass. The wayfinder was pointing west-southwest towards the swamp with the venomous creature Isuma mentioned instead of north.

They proceeded onward through the metal lined halls and came to a room with an intricate symbol etched on the metal floor. They came in from the east and a passage exited the room to the north with a dozen niches lining the walls of the chamber. Each alcove contained a strange tangle of odd mechanical devices protruding from their back walls. What appeared to be four human beings stood in the chamber, and they moved immediately to attack the party.

Victoria summoned two skeletal champions into a flank within the room and they soon discovered they were robots that looked human. Three of them shot at the party and one hit Dugald for a very mild shock. One of the robots slammed one of the skeletons with its fists until it was dust. Bellatrix popped a potion of invisibility and moved into the room to gain surprise.

Isaac now recognized them as mannequin robots, robots designed to look like humans but unlike androids were not actually living things. Isaac fired off his EMP pistol and damaged one heavily as Aedann charged in to smash the robotic menace. Eduard moved in and threw a fuzzy ball from his bag of tricks which turned into a wolverine in mid-flight and then attacked one of the robots.

Dugald charged in, knocked a robot back and to the ground then slammed Valerie into the automaton. The skeletal champion moved in and attacked as Victoria cast boneshatter on the one on Aedann, blowing it apart. The robots moved in to attack and the one Dugald attacked stood up, getting slammed by Dugald. One robot threw a concussion grenade harming Aedann, Bellatrix, Dugald, and the wolverine.

Bellatrix became visible in a powerful sneak attack as Isaac struck with his EMP pistol. Aedann sliced right through one robot then moved on to a second one. The wolverine successfully hit with both claws and a bite, tearing a chunk out of it’s rubber hide. Eduard used his ring of the ram to smashed into the one the wolverine hit and destroyed it. Dugald took on the last robot and smashed it into the floor.

On Huginn’s request, Aedann destroyed the last skeletal champion. When Victoria questioned how Huginn could work with an undead, he replied that Aedann had a purpose and would eventually move on. If he failed in this, then he would have to be destroyed. One of the reasons Huginn came back as a nosoi psychopomp was to monitor the situation. He proudly informed Victoria that he was regularly sending reports on the situation back to Pharasma and was making sure they were filed in triplicate.

They searched the room and found the symbol on the floor was a series of symbols representing fragmentary excerpts from complex programming code written in Androffan. The symbol in and of itself was meaningless. They alcoves were power recharge units, which they had cables for so they could recharge their batteries there. They decided to recharge three batteries and two recharged and one went dead. They looted the remaining concussion grenades, healed up, and then went on to the next room.

There they found a mess of tubes and pistons on the east and west walls. Another corridor exited the space to the north. A section of the west wall was made of a slightly recessed slab of polished metal, possibly indicating a door. They began investigating the glaucite door to see if they could open it. Bellatrix checked over the door and verified it was electric and that it was trapped. She discovered that if she tried to open it, all the tubes would vent steam into the room.

Bellatrix removed the steam interconnections and deactivated the trap. She then rewired it from the wall tubes and managed to open it. They found another corridor which went west then turned north before ending in a second glaucite door. Bellatrix checked the door over and found nothing, but then stood back and let someone else to open the door with the touchpad that was next to it. Dugald touched the pad and the door slid open onto a large chamber.

The walls of the massive chamber are covered with metal plates and decorated with flashing lights, pulsating glass panels, and strange mechanical devices. The floor was etched with complex swirling patterns composed of thousands of tiny symbols. Banks of machinery and technological workstations filled the areas to the north and south. On a makeshift throne of machinery and junk was a complex-looking automaton with multiple arms ending in gripping talons. It had a set of four legs and a strange bell-shaped head with three red, glowing eyes.

The large robot moved forward and towards them, greeting them in Androffan. He refered to himself as the Reconstructed One, Binox the Mighty, & Binox the Builder. Born of the Master Unity, he demanded their obeisance. Binox would disassemble one of the party in payment for their insult, but would allow the others to survive in order to serve.

The party respectfully declined by Aedann drawing his greatsword and moving to attack.

Isaac recognized the robot as a reclamation robot, a robot designed to salvage technology and repair it. Apparently this one had gone right off its gourd. He gave them tactical information and the party joined the fray. Victoria moved in a fired off a lightning bolt from her want into the deranged robot. Binox fired his laser rifle into Victoria in response to her lightning attack.

Dugald charged in and slammed the robot hard as Isuma fired her zero rifle and managed to do significant damage to one of the monster’s servos. Isaac fired off his EMP pistol and managed to take down Binox’s force field. Aedann smashed it hard and Eduard cast grease on Aedann.

The robot reached over and captured Bellatrix after the gnome tried to slip by. It shot Aedann with its laser rifle and continued to berate them for their insolence. Dugald and Aedann missed as Eduard cast grease on Bellatrix. Victoria used Huginn to deliver a touch spell, then after trying to constrict Bellatrix, Binox shot Dugald and Aedann and followed through by capturing Aedann, Isuma, and Dugald in his claws.

Isuma attacked with her dagger to little effect as Isaac shot Binox with his EMP pistol and finally destroyed the reclamation robot. After healing again, they explored the room and Huginn located a hidden safe in the wall. Bellatrix searched it for traps and then worked the combination and opened it to reveal a large number of electrical weapons including arc grenades and EMP weaponry.

They followed another corridor to another door which opened into a twenty-foot square room which was empty except for an array of blinking lights and consoles built into the northern wall. Isaac figured out that the controls were for a geothermal generator. With this, Isaac could bring the charging units to five times the efficiency by turning off Binox’s throne room.

To the south they found a series of twenty-foot-wide rooms, each with a towering pillar of glowing metal and flashing lights. The towering pillars periodically vented small puffs of steam, and the air within was warm and humid. They found this series led down to the tube-venting room they had found earlier, securing the entire complex.

[Feros]

Session 22:

It was only mid-afternoon, so they proceeded to see if they could gain some aid from the techno-phobic androids. After leaving the Machine Caves and travelling across the valley, they encountered a group of eight people on the south side of the small river. As they approached, Isaac recognized that they were in fact androids based on their mannerisms and they were discussing which direction they should go.

Isaac shouted out in greeting in Androffan. The androids looked up startled and greeted the party back in Taldane. They were concerned that the party carried “blasphemies”, but would be willing to help them get rid of them if the party could help guide them to their fellow pilgrims in the Scar. Isaac argued with pure logic that while they appreciated the offer, not everyone agreed that technology was evil and their belief was of equal validity.

The androids accepted his argument, but asked if they could tell them the tale of Omed the prophet. Isaac accepted and they told the party of an apocalyptic preacher in the distant Numerian town of Dravod Knock, spreading a message that technological items are an evil affront to all the gods and must be eradicated. He even condemned the use of gunpowder and firearms. Several residents of his community adopted this message, leading town elders to fear for trade and what little technology the settlement possessed.

When they confronted Omed, the mad prophet attempted to prove the dangers of technology by detonating a satchel of grenades, killing himself and several town guards in the process.

At this point Bellatrix had to hide behind Victoria and stifle her laughter. Dugald struggled not to face palm.

A small group of androids living under the guise of humanity had heard Omed’s words and had been persuaded further by his final sermon and suicide. The androids had become convinced that they themselves were affronts to nature and opted for self-imposed exile in the Felldales. Following a charismatic leader, Harab, these penitent androids have come to the Scar of the Spider in hopes of achieving some sort of awakening and learn how to shed their artificiality and join the truly living. These androids had travelled here to join them.

The party informed the androids that they were looking for Harab and her pilgrims as well, so they all agreed to travel together for additional safety. They proceeded up the south side of the valley towards the small canyon where Paeytr and Isuma had indicated they made their lair. As they travelled Isaac discussed their philosophy with the androids and by the time they arrived at the small cave, he had persuaded them to reconsider their view point through his impeccable logic.

It was getting dark as they approached the cave and they saw a campfire in the entrance way. Four androids finally noticed them and they jumped up at the ready. One of them called out, “Harab! We’ve got visitors!” Isaac said that they were seeking shelter for the night and that they brought another eight possible pilgrims to join them.

As they spoke, and attractive female android came out from deeper in the cave. She greeted the party and pilgrims and pointed out their technology would have to be destroyed. Harab said the party should comply; the androids did want them to harm them, but they had a holy purpose they had to fulfill. Isaac responded with polite arguments and logical points to deescalate the situation. He successfully calmed down Harab and the other pilgrims enough to avoid a violent conflict and begin discussing the issue civilly.

They spent the night resting while Isaac, Harab, and the other androids discussed technology, Omed’s philosophy, and the logical basis for all the arguments. By the next morning, Neth 24th, Isaac had convinced Harab and their followers that they should rethink every part of their philosophy. It was decided that they should accept their android nature but if they wished to live in a community where technology would be kept to a minimum they should travel to Iadenveigh. By telling the Deadeye Council that the party were the ones who suggested they go there, they will be given the benefit of the doubt in spite the fact that they were androids.

Harab and her followers began to pack up for the journey, and Harab gave them what information she had about further up the valley. She suggested they may want to deal with the aliens in the fungal cave before proceeding up the Scar to keep them from attacking the party from behind. Everyone was refreshed and in good spirits as the party set out towards the Fungal Caves.

On the route to the caves they came across an encampment where they found a tiefling sitting by a fire dressed all in red with a deep purple cloak. He introduced himself as Hyrsek Caio and made polite enquiries to their health and well-being. He was cheerful and friendly, raising Dugald’s suspicions immediately.

As they sat and talked to the man, he asked them what had brought them here. Isaac told him about their mission to get a piece of misplaced technology. They mentioned that they had heard of him questioning people about Technic League agents and Isaac pointed out that the party was opposed to the technomancers. Hyrsek admitted that he was hired by the League, but wasn’t a member of the League. Dugald grumbled over the distinction.

Hyrsek explained that he was at a juncture point, scouting out the Scar of the Spider for a potential future expedition by the League. He was between three different alien lairs: a fungal lair, a rotting ship with destructive aliens by a lake, and a third alien presence inside a swamp to the south west of his camp. Isaac realized that Hyrsek was holding something back and since he seemed to have been here for weeks he had enough information to return from a scouting mission.

When Isaac confronted him about it, Hyrsek reluctantly admitted that he had another mission as well: He had been hired by a Technic League Captain named Ghartone to find a fellow Technic Leaguer named Therace after Therace headed out on an expedition that never went where they said they were going. Suspicious that Therace may have had an ulterior motive, Ghartone wanted the man’s gear back to keep it from slipping out of League hands. Ghartone wasn’t eager to reveal to the other Technic League captains that he’d lost track of one of his more important minions, so Hyrsek was hired to keep the whole mess on the “down-low”.

Hyrsek made an offer: he would help them out if they helped him find Therace and bring him back. If Therace is dead, he needed to bring back the wizard’s brain and gear. He had been trying to figure out which aliens he would confront to find Therace. Dugald and Eduard were not happy with working with a Technic League hire, but Hyrsek stated that he did not like the league himself but they paid very well. When the suggestion of hiring off Hyrsek was begun to be brought up, the mercenary dissuaded them as he would like to keep on the League’s good terms as whatever they paid him would be not enough to cover all future jobs that he would lose.

At this point Isaac told Hyrsek about how they were looking for a neurocam, a helmet that stores memories and knowledge of a person. Hyrsek was intrigued and wondered why they would look for one in the Scar. Isaac stated that all the evidence supported one being there. To see if he could be trusted, Bellatrix, Victoria, and Huginn continued the conversation, Isaac prepared and used a see alignment extract and determined that Hyrsek was Lawful Evil as suspected. With a few reservations and everyone in agreement, the party continued on.

They arrived to find a rocky wall covered in swaths of green mold. A few mold-encrusted trees and undergrowth brambles could also be seen—one particularly large patch nearly obscured a single cave entrance at the cliff base. Isaac approached close enough to see a ways into the cave, observing that walls and floors were covered with slimy green molds and the air was filled with a green haze of mold spores.

Isuma had a protective mask and Huginn, Aedann and Isaac were immune to disease so they moved forward to investigate the cave and find a safe place (if any) existed for the others. As they approached the cave, three shambling mounds rose up out of the vegetation and attacked Isuma, Isaac, and Aedann. Isuma and Isaac were grabbed by their mounds and held as the rest of the party got ready to fight.

Isuma tried to break free of the shambler’s grasp unsuccessfully but fired a shot into it with her zero rifle. Victoria used Huginn to cast corrosive touch on a shambler over the nosoi’s objections, with the psychopomp pointing out that “this was how he died.” Hyrsek moved in so as to help provide flanking with Aedann, sliding past the shambling mounds without harm. Aedann sliced through two mounds, tearing a large gash in the one on him.

He struck a second time and killed the one next to him and then slashed tears in the one holding Isaac. One of the shamblers attacked Dugald, but failed to grab him as it started to crush and absorb Isuma. The other began crushing Isaac and grabbed Aedann as it struck. Dugald stepped in and swung Valerie hard and smashed the earthbreaker into the mound. Isaac reserved his tactics to aid Dugald in striking. Isuma managed to escape her bonds and fired off a shot into the shambler that attacked her.

Victoria got Huginn to attack with a chill touch as Hyrsek moved into a flank and struck with his frost estoc and killed the one holding Isaac. Aedann proceeded to slash the remaining mound in twain with a final strike.

The party healed up before Aedann, Huginn, Isaac, and Isuma proceeded into the cave mouth. After they went a short ways forward, they found that the green spores in the air was consistent throughout. The tunnel widened into what appeared to be a dead end. A set of six humanoid ribcages, stained red by scraps of meat and hanging from cords adorned the ceiling. The odor of rotting flesh mingled with the stink of the swamp water covering the cave passage’s floor.

A further investigation discovered an opening two feet high and eight feet across up fifteen feet on the back wall. The ribcages seemed to be human and had apparently been strung up on purpose, like decorations or trophies. Aedann, Isuma, and Isaac found that climbing proved to be near impossible with a slime covered wall. Attempts to work it out resulted in Aedann slipping, falling on Isaac, and dumping them both into the muck multiple times. Finally Isaac used an extract to get up the wall and put a spike in then sent down a knotted rope.

At the top the found themselves at the corner of a corridor heading north in one direction and west the other way. They decided to go west to try and find another entrance. After a hairpin turn they found themselves heading southeast as the tunnel widened. The ceiling climbed to twenty feet and a few bones, still with traces of gore, were scattered on the floor.

They covered their everburning torch and Isaac was able to locate two alcoves fifteen feet above on either side of the tunnel, masked with hanging moss and fungus. They decided to let Huginn go investigate the alcoves. He sighed and agreed, flying up to the ledge on the right and a red claw came out, grabbed him with a squawk, and pulled the nosoi behind the curtain.

Isuma fired a zero rifle shot onto the ledge roughly where Huginn got grabbed and managed to hit one of them, but whatever they were seemed to be unaffected by her shot. Isaac threw two gas grenades up onto each ledge. Aedann fired a shot off from his bow and managed to hit something that wasn’t Huginn. Then six odd creatures with bulbous fungoid lumps for heads, spiny insectoid wings, and a tangle of spiky, clawed legs came out of the enclosures and landed around the three party members in the tunnel. One held Huginn in its grip.

They clawed at Isaac, Isuma, and Aedann, grabbing Isaac and Isuma in their long slender claws. Victoria reacted to Huginn’s distress and cast dimension door, travelling with Bellatrix, Dugald, and Eduard to the battle scene. Eduard and Victoria were immediately sickened by the spores. Hyrsek began to run into the tunnel to get there as fast as he could. Dugald smashed one of the creatures with Valerie injuring it though it seemed resistant to the blow.

Eduard cast grease on Huginn and he slipped out of the creature’s claws and flew over to Victoria. Bellatrix slashed one of the creatures with her axe and managed to open large gashes in their sides. Isuma changed out her rifle for a dagger. Isaac found them resistant to his rapier but Aedann was able to slash right through one and killed it, continuing into another and managed to kill it as well.

The four remaining began to claw at the party, and the one on Isaac began to disembowel him with its razor sharp claws performing precise and invasive surgery to remove bits of his innards. The gas grenades went off filling the ledges with noxious vapors. The creatures moved Dugald and Victoria with their claws setting up a flank on Aedann. Another one slashed him for significant damage but was unable to grapple Aedann.

Victoria tried to cast defensively but failed to get it off as Dugald struck with a massive blow from Valerie, smashing one of the creatures into a blast of goo. He followed through with a massive strike on a second one, splattering into the wall. Bellatrix, Isaac, and Isuma did some damage before Aedann stepped in and slashed through two of them killing the last two.

Eduard had heard of the creatures through rumours from his dealings with the Technic League in the past. They were called mi-go, intelligent fungi from space that enjoy vivisecting people for intellectual enjoyment. They healed up the party as Hyrsek arrived, running in from the tunnel. Isaac inspected the ledges and found them both to be empty.

[Feros]

Session 23:

They continued westward and came to a large cave that acted as a junction with exits to the north and south. After some deliberation, the party chose to head north. They came to a cavern that was thirty-five feet high, with a central pillar of natural rock supporting it. The surfaces of the chamber were spattered with red and there were bones scattered everywhere. Isaac spotted a ledge around the central pillar eighteen feet above the floor.

Isaac heard something big moving behind some openings on the north-western side of the cave. As they entered the chamber, three massive creatures with mouths opening out of the tops of their heads and arms that broke into two clawed endings squeezed out of the small openings that seemed far too small to allow their bulks through. They promptly attacked the party with enthusiasm.

Aedann charged one of the monsters and managed to slash the leg of the beast. Isuma moved into a good position and shot the same creature Aedann was combatting with her zero rifle. The creatures attacked Aedann as he was closest and one of the monsters managed to get both claws into the geiswicht, rending a horrid wound. Bellatrix tried to move through to help flank on the creatures, but got hit by two claws on the way.

Bellatrix slashed at their legs with her hand axe and managed to cut a nasty gash across a tendon. Victoria summoned a vanth psychopomp to help with the fight, which promptly stepped in and struck a creature with its scythe. Eduard began an inspiring performance, adding courage to the party. Isaac identified the creatures as gugs, horrid monstrosities from the darklands.

His knowledge gave the party help in applying tactics to the gugs. Isaac then fired off his sonic rifle into the wounded gug as Dugald stepped in and bull rushed the first gug, knocking it prone into the next gug which fell prone and then fell into the third which also fell flat. Aedann managed to kill one as it fell and Dugald, Bellatrix, and the Vanth struck injuring the remaining two. Aedann and Hyrsek moved into a flanking position and proceeded to take the other two gugs apart as it stood up, with Isuma firing in with her zero rifle as well.

Isaac and Victoria went to work repairing Aedann as the rest of the party investigated the chamber. Bellatrix went through the narrow passages the gugs came from and found two dens, but nothing of value. Aedann tossed Bellatrix up to the eighteen-foot ledge and there she found some valuables and a few odd magic items, including a ring of counterspells and a wand of touch of slime. Further searching of the cavern revealed a passage heading north out of the eastern wall, coming to a dead end.

Isaac and Bellatrix searched the area and discovered a thin mat of fungus covering a hole in the ceiling leading to a narrow tunnel. Aedann boosted Dugald up into the tunnel which he followed for about twenty feet where he found a hole in the floor leading to a small cave with a narrow tunnel leading out to the northeast, where a yellow-green glow flickered.

The party moved through to the small cave and Isaac checked for radiation, but the radiation detector registered safe. As the party moved into the tunnel towards the yellow glow, they found five mi-go around five tables of strange metallic-looking fungus. Each of the tables was spattered with gore—the mi-go were hard at work dissecting an aurumvorax on one table.

Isuma got a sonic rifle from Isaac as he gave the party tactical info on the creatures based on recovered memories and the last encounter with the mi-go. Dugald stepped in and smashed one of the mi-go, closing off the exit to the small cave. Bellatrix moved in to be ready for the next opportunity to strike. Hyrsek moved into a flank and struck with a powerful precise strike with his estoc, killing one.

The mi-go attacked and managed to grab Bellatrix, Hyrsek, and Dugald with their long sharp claws. Aedann stepped in and damaged the one holding Bellatrix as Victoria cast summoned two skeletal champions to fight for the party. Eduard cast grease on Bellatrix to help her escape and Isuma shot the mi-go holding Bellatrix with the sonic rifle, killing it. Dugald broke free and hit the one holding him with Valerie as Bellatrix moved in and flanked with Hyrsek and killed one. Hyrsek flanked with Dugald and killed another one. Aedann moved in and sliced the last one in two.

Searching the viscera on the floor, Bellatrix found a metal bracelet on a rotten hand which Isaac identified as one of a pair of bracelets that produce a personal force field. After spending twenty more minutes going through the disgusting viscera and body parts, Bellatrix was unable to find the other bracelet. Isaac then took out his metal detector and confirmed that it wasn’t present, annoying the gnome to no end. They also found four metallic cylinders that Victoria recognized through detect magic as mi-go brain cylinders.

The party retraced their steps to the junction cave and headed south. The stone corridor opened into a long, dank cavern, the sound of dripping moisture filling the chamber. Six mi-go were clinging to the walls, apparently in some form of meditation. The party did not hesitate and attacked, with Victoria casting lightning bolt off her wand to soften some of them up a little. Bellatrix used the wand of touch of slime to attack a mi-go and it began to be devoured by the patch of green slime that appeared on it. Dugald and Aedann moved in and began striking at the fungal monsters.

Eduard used his ring of the ram to slam into another of the mi-go as Isaac resolved to keep back and aid others in attacking. Hyrsek moved in and killed off one of the wounded mi-go. Victoria fired off another lightning bolt, but it had little effect. Dugald smashed through and managed to kill two with powerful strikes. Aedann killed another two and finished them off with powerful swings. They searched the area and they discovered a five-foot-wide hole in the ceiling in the southwest corner of the cave. This led to a small tunnel which led to an area open to the sky above free of air-borne spores. The walls went up eighty feet to the outside and at the north end of this hole there was a cave thirty feet above the floor of the opening.

The party decided to check that area out later and continued down the cavern tunnels. They continued and found a huge, domed cavern. Clots of phosphorescent lichen grew on the ceiling twenty-five feet above providing dim illumination to the cave. Dry ledges sat to the east and west, while to the north loomed a huge plant-like monstrosity, its branches dangling with mucus-like fungi. The walls of the cave were decorated in patterns of glowing fungi, many of which repeated a symbol of three deformed goat-like heads facing outward so that their six curved horns almost formed a circle.

On advice from the party, Victoria fired off a lightning bolt into the tree, which responded in a booming, sloppy voice in Aklo, its trunk heaving to form the words. Isaac translated it as, “You intrude, fleshlings, but the Black Goat welcomes you—join her, serve her, become her!” Victoria recognized the “Black Goat” reference as referring to Shub-Niggurath, and ancient obscure god of monsters and fertility.

Three creatures looking like a mass of tentacles, eyes, claws, and mouths, fungal and moving about on a dozen hoof-tipped tentacles emerged from the tree and attacked the party. Isaac recognized these as chaos beasts, dangerous creatures that could cause those they strike to become like themselves. Isaac threw two concussion grenades into the beasts, softening them up considerably.

Aedann moved in and slashed into the rapidly undulating creatures as they seemed to cast spells, but they had no effect on the party. Victoria cast another lightning bolt on the creatures followed by Dugald charging in and striking true with Valerie. Eduard inspired courage with his performance and Isuma shot one with the sonic rifle. Bellatrix waded into the chamber and missed with her crossbow as Isaac threw another concussion grenade to affect two of the chaos beasts.

Aedann got in another strike as chaos beasts hit him with four claws. Victoria tossed in an acid splash to see if they were affected by acid—they were—and Dugald smashed another beast with his earth breaker. Aedann, Hyrsek, and Dugald smashed the chaos beasts with rapid strikes and succeeded in finishing them off without much more fuss.

They searched the chamber and found that totems and offerings had been knocked loose from the tree, including several bloody bones and rotting organs, coated in moldy filth. Among this was a skull with five platinum teeth and a decaying human heart with a functional thoracic nanite chamber.

With no other exits, the party returned to the chamber open to the sky above. They then worked together to get the party up the thirty feet to the northern tunnel to investigate it and find whether there was anything there. Aedann and Isaac were the first up into the tunnel and as they entered, blood-freezing howls emerged from the dark. Isaac put a spike in with a knotted rope for the others.

Aedann moved down the tunnel and faced the four long necked, amphibian creatures making the howling noise. Victoria was dazed by the howls, but the rest of the party were able to shake it off. Dugald moved ahead and the amphibians lunged forward and hit Aedann, tearing small chunks out of him. Isuma shot one and Aedann promptly killed it and another two with powerful slices, stepped in and killed the last. Isaac identified them as vooniths, amphibians with a particularly cruel sense of humour.

Isaac searched the muck-filled chamber, finding a basket of reeds floating in the ooze at the cave’s northern corner. In the basket they found three touches of avolition, pieces of mi-go technology. With the cave secure, they left the foul-smelling cave and decided to camp using an emergency raft to keep from camping in the slime and rested for the evening.

[Feros]

Session 24:

They deflated the emergency raft and proceeded down the tunnel back into the area they hadn’t yet explored. They passed by a tunnel on their left and came to a tall cavern some thirty feet high. The walls were hung with many bones. A corridor led to the north and a ledge led up from the lower cavern to the south. On this ledge were two gugs, which promptly moved to the attack.

Isuma shot the first gug with the sonic rifle as Bellatrix ran in and slashed at its lower leg with her axe, hindering its ability to defend itself. Eduard used his ring of the ram to hammer the gug while Victoria summoned a vanth to aid the group. The vanth struck with his scythe and Dugald charged in and hit the gug with a bull rush, knocking it down and into the second gug, but failed to knock it down. Bellatrix, the vanth and Dugald struck the gug as it fell.

Isaac moved in and hit the gug with his rapier after studying the gug for weaknesses, but didn’t get a solid hit. Aedann charged in and struck the first one, killed it, and sliced it into the second one. Hyrsek then ran in to get a flank with Aedann and struck with his estoc. The gug fled to the northern corridor, taking several hits before it got out of the chamber.

A search revealed two other exits hidden by the bones: one very narrow tunnel to the north and a hole in the floor to a tunnel heading south. They decided to explore the tunnel south and came to another hole down into a long, low-ceilinged cave with foul-smelling air, the fungus thick on every surface. The ceiling was six feet high, and the western end of the cave pulsated with a black miasma. Curious, they sent Aedann and Isaac forward.

Dugald determined that something was absorbing the light at the end of the cave. Aedann moved into the darkness and found a dead mi-go. Isaac followed Aedann in and determined that the mi-go was apparently infected with some sort of virulent disease, which would infect anyone not immune to disease with it if they came in contact with the body or the darkness. The party decided to leave this room alone and returned to the bone cave.

Bellatrix and Huginn went down the narrow tunnel to see where it led, searching for traps as they went. The rest of the party went along the tunnel to the north. They both arrived at a long cavern with a twenty-five-foot high ceiling supported four large columns of rock. Several ledges, each ten feet off the fungus-encrusted floor below, overlooked the cavern. At the far end, the gug that fled was standing with another one over a dead gug, with seven mi-go, one holding a purple crystal staff, standing on the ledge overlooking the two gugs.

Bellatrix and Huginn were at the far eastern side of the chamber, with the rest of the party entering from the center of the south wall. Victoria summoned another vanth and set it in after Aedann charged in and they flanked and slashed at a gug. The vanth got a critical hit with its scythe and sliced the wounded gug in two. Bellatrix stealthily moved around the chamber to get ready to strike from the shadows as Huginn returned to Victoria’s side.

Bellatrix struck at the gug and got a good slash with her axe. Dugald charged in as the mi-go flew out and began flanking and assaulting the party members who had moved out into the room. The only mi-go that remained out of melee was the one holding the purple staff, and it began casting spells. The mi-go slashed into Dugald along with a rend from the gug, seriously wounding the dwarf and holding him in their claws.

Aedann attacked the mi-go and managed to kill two of them with multiple strikes. The spell-casting mi-go summoned a mud elemental which struck at the party members at the rear. Isaac charged towards the mud elemental, flipped over it, slid between two mi-go and struck one of the creatures with a studied strike. Eduard cast phantasmal killer on the mud elemental and killed it.

The vanth and Aedann tore into the gug while Isuma pulled back away from the mi-go. Dugald struck the gug with his light hammer and wore it down far enough for Hyrsek to finish it off. The mi-go began eviscerating Dugald with their long claws. Others began tearing apart the vanth, gripping the psychopomp in their claws. Aedann took apart one of the mi-go holding Dugald as the spell-caster cast irradiate on Isaac, Aedann, Dugald, Bellatrix, and Hyrsek, but it had little effect.

The vanth clawed at the mi-go, and Dugald began hitting his mi-go trying to free himself. Hyrsek moved around and took on another of the fungi as the mi-go tore out vital bits of its body. The mi-go grabbed Bellatrix and others continued to tear out Dugald’s vitals. Aedann killed one that was holding Dugald then stepped up to attack the other. Victoria cast vampiric touch on the caster through Huginn, who complained bitterly as he traveled to the mi-go.

Isuma shot the last mi-go holding Dugald with the sonic rifle and killed it, freeing the dwarf. Hyrsek polished off another mi-go and then climbed up the ledge to begin moving towards the spell-caster as the mi-go holding Bellatrix began surgically removing the gnome’s innards. Aedann pulled out his bow and began shooting at the clerical mi-go. The mi-go leader struck Huginn with fleshworm infestation. Isaac shot the mi-go with his inferno gun, doing little damage.

The vanth moved over to attack the spell-caster and Eduard began an inspiring performance. Victoria called back Huginn and hit the cleric with a lightning bolt, but failed to affect the mi-go. At last they managed to kill the last mi-go away from the ledge, but the cleric cast wall of thorns to protect itself, sealing itself away with only the vanth behind the barrier with it. Eduard managed to get off a dispel magic using his wand and got rid of the wall. Isuma shot the cleric with the sonic rifle, managing to hurt the cleric severely.

Bellatrix tried to affect the mi-go with her wand of touch of slime and Isaac gave Aedann an extract of levitate which the geiswicht used to get up the wall and attack the mi-go spell-caster. The caster swatted the vanth with the crystal staff and destroyed the psychopomp. Bellatrix applied a nanite hypo-gun on Huginn to get rid of the worms as Hyrsek moved to flank with Aedann. Eduard hit the cleric with his ring of the ram.

Aedann got hit by the mi-go cleric with a cure critical wounds, but he followed that up with powerful strikes which killed the spell-caster. After the fight, Victoria began suffering the effects of the slime they had been fighting in; apparently, it was toxic. She was heavily hurt, nearly dead before they got her out of it and managed to detoxify her.

They got out of the goop and began healing as they searched the area. The cleric mi-go had a staff of the Dark Tapestry, which Eduard claimed. They discovered another hole leading to yet another cave, in which they found a mi-go brain cylinder that was occupied. Activating it they were met with a metallic scream.

This turned out to be the brain of Therace Holiyard, the Technic League lieutenant Hyrsek was looking for. He answered some questions they had about his research into the Dominion of the Black, the Technic League, and Starfall. He also mentioned that he had sent the remaining part of his expedition towards the southwestern swamp before he fell to the mi-go. He was unaware of what their fate was.

With his mission in the Scar now complete, Hyrsek asked for Therace’s gear—which they found off to the side—and the brain cylinder. They still had one more passage to check on, but they decided to send those without protection or resistance from disease—Victoria, Eduard, and Bellatrix—out with Hyrsek using a dimension door to wait until the rest were done exploring and let the tiefling go. After the spell was cast, Hyrsek took his leave of the party, with thanks.

Inside the caves, the smaller party returned to the tunnel they passed and followed it to a large chamber, with a ceiling thirty feet high. The floor and walls were caked with a layer of the fuzzy green toxic mold, but a ledge twenty feet above the ground was clear of the fungus. A skeletal body clad in chainmail and missing some of its right arm was slumped atop this ledge. They decided to send Aedann through the toxic goop to retrieve the corpse to see if there was anything on it worth taking.

After some effort, Aedann completed the task and brought the skeleton to them: the pool of toxic sludge was thirty feet deep. They found the other bracelet of the force field they had discovered earlier. With the cave complex explored and cleared, they headed out and joined the rest of the party outside. They worked at healing themselves and detoxifying after spending so much time in the fungus caves.

They were met by Harab, the leader of the technophobic androids, as they rested. She had come back after escorting her followers out of the Scar of the Spider and on their way towards Iadenveigh. She wanted to help them for as long as they remained in the Scar in gratitude for Isaac’s guidance. After resting and healing, they decided to follow the faulty wayfinder towards the southwest, to see what it was pointing towards and if they could find what remained of Therace’s expedition.

They proceeded towards the swamp, and the wayfinder directed them up the southern side of the valley. There they found a small cave entrance somewhat obscured by foliage. They got into single file with Aedann in the lead and proceeded into the tunnel.

[Feros]

Session 25:

The entrance to the cave was only 3 feet wide—everyone but Bellatrix had to squeeze to get inside. The cave was damp, with walls dripping with moisture. Bellatrix and Isaac searched for traps as they went, but found nothing. They eventually came to a small cave with a low ceiling two small pools of mineral laden water. Slumped between the pools against the western wall was a highly decomposed body.

Isaac and Aedann searched the pools and found them to be about five feet deep but too cloudy to see anything in. Bellatrix searched the rotted and rusted remains and found in the fragments of a crumbling leather pouch a clear blue sapphire. The body’s skeletal hand gripped a firedrake pistol, still in fine condition thanks to its magic.

The needle of the wayfinder pointed into the solid rock wall to the southeast, so the party began to suspect a secret door or concealed tunnel. Aedann entered the southern pool and poked the floor with his sword and found a drop off at the far end of the pool. Isaac prepared some water breathing extracts and the party went down through the submerged tunnel to emerge into another small cave with a low ceiling.

A pale figure dressed in a red scatterlight suit stood with its back to the pool, holding some sort of necklace it was wearing up before its eyes. As the party rose up into the cave from the pool, the figure let the necklace fall and spoke to them in a dry, rasping voice: “So you live still, eh, Benoche? This is as far as it goes. It ends here.” At that, the figure turned and opens fire with a sonic pistol, checking its shot when it saw Dugald holding the wayfinder.

The figure threw itself at Dugald’s feet, begging his “darling Maura” for forgiveness for abandoning her. A rather bemused Dugald forgave him and the pale stranger sighed in relief, then collapsed to the ground, destroyed. As he did so, Victoria and Huginn witnessed his spirit departing his body as well as the spirit of a beautiful woman departing the wayfinder. They embraced and faded out together.

Huginn excused himself and went to make sure they made it to the boneyard ok before returning to act as Victoria’s familiar again. Dugald found that the wayfinder now pointed north properly. They looted the corpse and got two timeworn sonic pistols, the red scatterlight suit, and what Isaac determined was a compassion memory facet. The party then departed the cave system and headed down into the valley and the swamp.

The valley was a mix of stagnant ponds, bogs, and trickling rivers fed from numerous hot springs. The valley’s narrowing contours compressed all the seepage to the northeast, eventually funneling the waters into a creek that drained north to the larger river.

The party found that in the swamp, the vegetation seemed eerily abundant and mobile; tree branches writhed and swayed despite the lack of wind, while roots and swamp fruits bulged with foul-smelling fluids. As they travelled into the swamp further and further southwest, the vegetation grew more brittle and ashen. They arrived at the end of the valley and found the vegetation strangely dry and with a chalky, ashen texture.

Bellatrix, Victoria, Isuma, and Isaac began acting listless and lacking ambition, with these feelings growing worse the further they walked into the march. The swamp vegetation in front of the cliff face had been somehow drained of its colour—but now and then, a strange shimmer passed through the vegetation and silt...a shimmer of a colour difficult to classify. Five cave entrances in the cliffside had weirdly shimmering mud staining the tunnel floors.

As they approached the caves, a massive creature shaped like a gigantic bullfrog with clawed rear legs, a tail and four tentacles where its front legs should have been emerged from the largest cave entrance. It had three eyes on top of a stalk at the center of the top of its head. The monster appeared to be suffering from several raw wounds, and as it moved those wounds shimmered with the strange undefinable hue as the surrounding swamp vegetation.

The creature moved forward to be able to attack, Isuma shot it, and Harab circled around. Aedann shot it with his bow while Isaac identified it as a froghemoth, but in his languid state he remembered little of note about it. Isaac shot it with his sonic rifle, but Dugald recalled some of the tactical abilities of froghemoths from dwarven legends. He shouted out what he knew about them as he threw a light hammer at the beast.

Bellatrix snuck up on the froghemoth with little enthusiasm as Victoria summoned a vanth, which promptly fell into a state of ennui. Still it did manage to slash it with his scythe. Eduard cast grease on Dugald in anticipation of tentacle or tongue grabbing as the froghemoth destroyed the summoned vanth.

Despite the grease, Dugald got grabbed by a tentacle as Bellatrix moved in and Victoria cast acidic spray. Eduard began an inspiring performance to bolster the party’s courage as the froghemoth tried to constrict Dugald, but the froghemoth failed to damage the dwarf due to the grease. It grabbed Aedann in its mouth and attacked him with its tongue. It then grabbed Bellatrix with another tentacle.

Dugald escaped the frogemoth’s grip as it swallowed Aedann. Bellatrix managed to feint the monster and got a successful sneak attack strike. Victoria cast boneshatter on the creature as Aedann cut his way out of the beast’s gullet with his dagger. Dugald finally was free to pummel the beast as Victoria cast ray of exhaustion on the beast. Eduard used his ring of the ram on the froghemoth, crushing the beast’s skull.

Isaac finally figured out that they were being affected by a colour out of space—an alien living creature that was essentially a blast of energy that drained energy and lifeforce from living beings it encountered until it was ready to reproduce. They would have to proceed carefully.

They proceeded into the caves and began exploring cautiously. They found a chamber with four heaps of what appeared to be discarded clothing and armor, strewn out on the cave floor as if the people who’d worn it had simply laid down and evaporated away, leaving their gear behind. They found four Technic League pins, indicating that they had found the remains of four of the five members of Therace’s team. They looted the “bodies”—Dugald added the pins to his collection—and continued.

They found a central domed chamber with several passageways entering from the sides. A few rock columns supported the ceiling twenty feet overhead. A large oval patch of dusty gray gravel that shone with an indescribable colour. At the center of the gravel bed was a ten-foot diameter hole.

They decided to descend into the hole, so Bellatrix and Isaac hammered in a piton to tie a rope to into the edge of the opening. As they did this, a strange massive, strange, and unearthly miasma of the undefinable colour exploded out of the hole to attack them. Aedann and Dugald moved in to attack the strange energy mass as Isaac started throwing shock grenades, one of which landed in the middle of the party.

The colour began draining Victoria of life, as they fought the creature to little effect. It then tried to disintegrate Aedann, but his tough hide protected himself long enough to slash at the creature with his greatsword. Massive hits with the magic sword finished off the colour out of space, which exploded in a blast of light.

After defeating the colour, they tied a knotted rope to the piton and descended fifty feet to the cavern below. In a small antechamber to the east, they found the remains of the fifth Technic League explorer. They looted his remains, and after searching the cave and finding nothing else they climbed back out and explored the rest of the caves.

They noticed that the strange colour that had been shimmering about was now gone. In the southeast corner of the caverns they found a chamber filled with thick, dusty spider webs. They cut away the webbing and began to search. Huginn detected an undead creature in the cavern and encouraged the party to clear the webs and kill it. As they moved in, Huginn fought off an attempt to possess the nosoi.

The undead creature then manifested itself as a ghostly apparition with backward facing feet, hands ending in claws and eyes glowing with blue fire. It wore an ornate purple robe. Harab, Bellatrix, and Dugald attacked with their magic weaponry, but did only a little damage. The creature slashed at Dugald, tearing nasty wounds and causing the dwarf to bleed profusely.

Isaac was unable to identify the creature due to his continuing ennui, and attacked with his sonic rifle. Eduard hit the creature with his ring of the ram as Victoria identified the creature as a bhuta, a vampiric spirit capable of draining a bleeding victim dry. She cast disrupt undead but missed. Aedann stepped up and slashed it along with the others as Eduard hit it with the ring of the ram again. It began draining blood from Dugald as it drank his freely flowing blood. It tore into Dugald with its claws, but Isaac used a cure serious wounds wand to stop the bleed and keep the dwarf from dying. Once more with the ring of the ram and the bhuta was destroyed.

In the cave’s northeastern niche, they found the skeletal remains of the man who became the bhuta. They looted the body and got a functional handy haversack, some other keen gear, and a scholar’s journal written by a Benevess Veskenti, presumably the dead man. He may have been a decent scholar, but a brief perusal of his journal by Isaac proved Benevess was a terrible writer. The caves explored, they decided to leave the swamp and return to Isuma’s cave for the night to rest and recover.

[Feros]

Session 26:

As the party rose on the morning of Neth 25th they found that they had recovered from the ennui, but they soon realized that Victoria was not recovering from the color out of space’s feeding attack on her. They decided to have Longdreamer fly them to Hajoth Hakados and pay for a priest of the church of Iomedae to cast restoration on the wizard. They spent the day their then returned to the Scar, arriving at mid-day on the 27th.

The only large place left to explore was the end of the valley and it would take the rest of the day to get there. So they stopped at Isuma’s cave to rest overnight and approach the Dominion of the Black forces in the morning. The party found an enormous hulk of a dead beast rotting in the sun, over four hundred feet long and two hundred high. It was truly disgusting to observe and smell, causing Eduard to pull back in revulsion. The water around it was stained and foul, and no plant life grew within a few hundred feet of the remains.

Isaac determined it was the Dominion drop ship the creatures had used to get to Golarion. Realizing that there might be Dominion forces inside the rotting corpse, they determined to go inside it over the objections of Eduard and Bellatrix. As they approached, Eduard and Victoria were sickened by the odour of rot. Looking for a way in, they noticed a few entrance tubes on a sand bar out in the water.

As Aedann moved into the water, an eel-headed predator with a long, spiny fin running down the length of its dolphin-like body explodes out of the water to attack him. Isaac identified it as a lukwata, a magic eating predator. Isaac shot it with his sonic rifle and Dugald threw a non-magical hammer at it. Aedann moved in close and slashed at it with his greatsword.

Isuma shot it with her zero rifle and Bellatrix ran out and jumped out onto a rotting tendril to get to the beast, getting in a sneak attack with her hammer. The lukwata bit and held onto Aedann and his sword, so Eduard cast grease on Aedann and Victoria cast dispel magic on his sword. Isuma shot it, then Dugald moved in and struck it hard with Valerie, nearly killing it. Aedann broke free and cut into the beast with his now non-magical sword, tearing it apart.

The party headed out over to the sand bar and travelled up one of the five fleshy tunnels to a damp chamber. The moist floor was irregular with tumor-like growths scattered across the surface. To the west, the walls cinched down into a tangle of pink, dripping fibers that mostly blocked the passage into an area beyond. The area glowed with bioluminescence created by rotting fibres.

Aedann slashed through the pink fibres and revealed a chamber beyond with even worse smell than the rest. It was empty, save for a tangle of ribbed gray cables hanging from the rotting walls. Bellatrix noticed that the floor was rotting out, and anyone stepping on it would cause the floor to rupture. She recommended crossing the floor by using the cables to avoid putting their full weight on the floor. They slowly crossed the disgusting chamber.

They followed a hallway that led to another entrance chamber and a corridor leading west through two more pink blocked doorways. They opened a doorway at the end of the corridor to the north, and found a vaulted round chamber held up by rib-like arches. Twitching, fuming gray-ribbed cables hanged from the walls. A twenty-foot wide pillar of decaying flesh, two sides of which were dominated by bulging, closed puckers, rose in the middle of the room.

As Aedann went in to investigate the puckers in the side of the column, the puckers opened and out poured masses of rot grubs. Bellatrix moved in and Harab used a scorching ray wand on a swarm. Isaac warned everyone about the dangers of rot grub swarms and told them how to affect the vermin. Isaac lobbed concussion grenades into the masses to good effect and Isuma shot another swarm three times with her zero rifle.

Dugald charged in and smashed a swarm with Valerie using his swarmbane clasp to destroy two swarms completely. The swarms tore into Aedann as they passed him to swarm Isuma and Harab. Bellatrix shot a swarm with her sonic pistol and Victoria cast lightning bolt on two swarms. Eduard used his ring of the ram and Harab moved out of the swarm and used her scorching ray wand again.

Isaac used his sonic rifle and Isuma moved out of the swarm and shot the swarms with her zero rifle. Dugald charged again and crushed another swarm while smashing a second. Victoria hit with another lightning bolt reducing the number of swarms to one. Then Dugald smashed the last swarm, smushing it completely.

Bellatrix and Isaac investigated the pillar and determined that it used to be an organic lift that no longer led anywhere as the other levels of the dropship were long crushed. The party headed south and opened another door leading to a massive central chamber with a drooping ceiling, sagging like a partially collapsed tent made of rotting flesh. The air itself swirls with multiple motes of various colors of light coming from tiny floating jellyfish-like creatures.

As they moved into the huge chamber, something cast call lightning storm and hit Isaac with a lightning bolt. Another bolt hit Aedann and then another horizontal bolt ripped through the party. Isaac spotted a strange looking creature he identified as a lunarma, a floating bulbous alien with a glowing, central, violet eye and barbed tentacles below. It carried a nasty looking technological gun with its tentacles.

Isaac hit with his sonic rifle and Dugald got hit with another lightning bolt from above. Then the lunarma hit them with another lightning bolt spell. Aedann hit it hard and Victoria cast boneshatter on the creature as Bellatrix feinted and got in a sneak attack, bewildering the creature. Isaac and Isuma shot it repeatedly and Dugald got hit with a blast from its gun. He was sickened by the dizzying effect and then got hit with another lightning bolt from above.

Aedann stepped in and slashed it with three vicious cuts. Victoria hit is with another boneshatter and cracked its shell. They healed up and inspected the gun, Isaac identified it as a timeworn mindrender, a particularly nasty weapon that shreds a person’s neural system. They had a choice of two exits out of the chamber and they took the western one. After Aedann opened the pink fibres, they met four neh-thalggus—brain collectors.

Eduard hit a brain collector with a critical strike with his ring of the ram as one of them cast acid arrow on Victoria. Another cast a lightning bolt through the party as another went invisible. The last cast magic missile and sent all four bolts into Aedann. Isuma managed to shoot one with her zero rifle. Aedann drank an extract of bull’s strength and charged in taking a little damage from one of the neh-thalggus legs before slamming into his target.

Victoria summoned a vanth and had him slash the one Aedann hit from a flank. Dugald charged in and attacked that same brain collector and killed it. Bellatrix followed in behind Dugald to move into a flank on one with Dugald. Eduard cast glitterdust from his wand to try an reveal the hidden brain collector. He failed on his first attempt, but succeeded in locating it on a second try.

Aedann stepped over and began shredding one in concert with the vanth as Victoria moved into position to hit two of the brain collectors with a lightning bolt spell. Dugald moved and killed another one. Bellatrix moved to approach another, not minding the way they dropped off as she approached in the least. Isuma shot one as Isaac used his rapier and his studied strike on one and they took it down.

Aedann moved in on the last one as it attacked Dugald, tearing into him with its claws, but Aedann proceeded to take into pieces. There were two exits to the west through more fibres that both led to an oblong room. To the southwest, the ceiling rose where what appeared to be an immense iron and glass cauldron hanging from coils of metal and muscle chains and cords. The inside of the cauldron churned with fluid and shook against its restraints.

A voice spoke to the party in a booming telepathic voice as they approached the cauldron. It demanded to know who they were and why they were there. The party cautiously responded that they were looking for a neuro-cam and were fighting the Dominion of the Black. The voice sighed in relief, telling them that they would be its “new body’s instrument for its murder!”

Isaac recognized the ooze as a shipmind, a creature designed by the Dominion of the Black to fly their ships. This one—calling itself The-Stars-Whisper—had gotten bitter over being left to die after the ship crashed. It wanted revenge not only for its own inevitable demise, but for the indignity that is imposed on all the others of its kind.

The-Stars-Whisper answered any questions they had on the Dominion of the Black, telling them that they’ll be facing intellect devourers (including one wearing a dragon) and many neh-thalggus in the hive. It told them about ugothokra, half-mechanical spider creatures that spread disease. The-Stars-Whisper also revealed that a small cache of equipment could be salvaged in a small chamber to the northeast.

It told them about the kyton Paajgat, who would tear them apart with spells and chains, and about an ascended brain collector calling itself the Dweller-In-Dark-Places, the leader of the whole band. In front of it all was a damaged annihilator robot that they would have to get past just to get into the place.

The-Stars-Whisper told the party that thee ship had been part of the group that had assaulted the Divinity 10,000 years ago as it had a unique drive system that the Dominion had wanted. The ship got away from the Dominion fleet and they then began hunting for the Divinity, only finding it five years ago. So the dropship crashed and here they were.

As the party got ready to leave, The-Stars-Whisper questioned whether they were strong enough to defeat the Dominion forces. It decided to attack them and try to kill them. If they defeated and killed it, the shipmind would die knowing they were strong enough for the job. If it killed them, it would know it would have to keep living until it found champions strong enough to complete the task. It fired a plasma bolt into Aedann and initiated combat.

Isaac gave the party tactical information which revealed that Dugald’s bludgeoning weaponry would be useless against the shipmind, but not its cauldron which acted like armor. Dugald would attack the armor as Isaac threw a zero grenade into the goop. Aedann moved in after the blast to strike at The-Stars-Whisper with his sword.

Dugald charged in and began smashing the cauldron with Valerie as the shipmind slammed into Dugald, Harab, and Aedann. Dugald began having a suppression effect from a touch of idiocy effect. It grabbed all three of them with its tendrils. Isuma shot it three times as Isaac shot it with his sonic rifle. Eduard cast grease on Aedann to help him escape, but he failed to break free. Victoria was unable to break through its spell resistance. Isaac and Isuma shot it multiple times with their rifles and Isaac took it out with a final shot.

They investigated the locker The-Stars-Whisper indicated and looted it, gaining several technological and magical items, including another AI memory facet, in this case an ingenuity facet. This would make an AI very capable of constructing and maintaining technological items.

They then began to leave the ship, investigating the one door they had not opened. The western half of the vaguely hourglass-shaped room was empty, but to the east there appeared to be two badly decayed mounds of bony shelves slumped in the middle of the room, surrounded by protrusions of bone and chitin. Searching the mounds produced two weirdly organic looking weapons they couldn’t immediately identify and a mouthpiece of the dominion, a device of dubious use to a bard at the price of some damage to their body. They took these strange devices and left the rotting corpse of a ship post haste.

[Feros]

Session 27:

The party decided to return to Isuma’s cave to rest before attempting to locate and enter the Dominion hive. As they journeyed back from the western edge of the Scar, Harab requested that the party try and recover the body of one of her android followers named Jarod who investigated a red mould encrusted spider cave and never returned. The party agreed to help her, and she led them to the cave.

The entrance of the fifteen-foot-wide cave was covered in a swath of bright red which proved to be a thin layer of some sort of crimson mold or lichen on closer inspection. Within the cave were sheets of red-encrusted spider webs as thick as a human’s finger. Isaac noted that the red lichen didn’t grow in sunlight and suspected that it might be radioactive. A quick use of their radiation detector proved him correct, so they ate the radiation protecting apples they got from Mad Paeytr before going in.

Isaac decided to toss in an alchemist’s fire to see what fire would do to the mould. He fumbled the throw and it landed in the group, damaging Isaac, Bellatrix, and Dugald. His second throw was successful and destroyed a patch of the mould, but it produced a massive burst of spores making that a dangerous way to clear the cave. They tried acid, sonic, and cold—Isuma’s zero-rifle proved to be the most effective, killing the red mould without a burst.

Isuma began clearing patched with her zero-rifle, slowly creating a safe area to proceed. Isuma led the way, followed by Dugald and Aedann. There they found five massive red mould encrusted ogre spiders, which moved to attack. Isaac used his studied strike to move in and injure one spider as Bellatrix moved in and debilitated the same one with her strike. Isuma killed one spider with three shots from her rifle and Harab moved in to help the others with flanking.

Dugald smashed one with a few swings and killed it and Aedann moved around to get a single strike. The one Dugald killed exploded in a mass of spores, but Bellatrix and Dugald were able to avoid damage from the radiation. Eduard inspired courage with his performance and Victoria used acidic spray on a spider. The spiders did little damage, hitting both Dugald and Bellatrix to little effect. Dugald smashed one dead with a single strike of Valerie as Harab, Isuma, and Bellatrix killed the others.

Isuma finished cleaning up the cave so they could search safely. They found a back niche in which they found the remains of the dead android. Isuma cleared off the mould from the corpse and they recovered it. Harab asked for a magical amulet with an image of two broken zero-rifles on it, but let the party take his other gear. They cremated Jarod’s body then returned to Isuma’s redoubt for the night.

The next morning, Neth the 29th, the healed-up party travelled all the way to the western edge of the Scar of the Spider. They found nothing but a cliff-face covered in vines. A search found nothing, but Eduard noticed that there was something odd about a thirty-foot section of vines in the wall. Isaac and Victoria determined that the vines were of no known species. They realized it was an illusion and proceeded cautiously into the illusionary wall.

They found an enormous domed chamber cut with startling precision and shone with a glassy finish. A fifteen-foot-wide corridor exited to the south, while opposite this hallway to the north a strange pucker-like growth of green scaly flesh grew. In the center of the chamber was a massive, scorpion shaped mechanism with smoke coming from it and broken parts—the damaged annihilator robot.

The annihilator fired off a plasma blast from its tail, hitting Aedann and Eduard and then moved toward the party quite slowly. Isaac gave tactical information on how to fight the robot then hit it twice with his sonic rifle. Bellatrix moved through the room to the other side of the robot to provide a flank. As Dugald charged in, he got hit by a massive claw but still made it up to the robot and smashed it with Valerie.

Isuma threw a gravity grenade as Harab moved around to also provide a flank as Bellatrix did. Aedann moved up—taking a hit doing that—and then slashed at the construct in a rage, taking down its force field. Eduard inspired courage again as Victoria cast disintegrate on the robot, doing massive damage to the construct. The annihilator then opened fire with its chain gun and claws, hitting Isuma and Harab with the gun and Aedann and Dugald with the claws.

Isaac shot it while Bellatrix hit a vulnerable spot and permanently disabled it. Aedann kept smashing it until it stopped humming. They healed up and then the party decided to explore the corridor to the south and found a room with several tubes made of a pink material on leathery stands—five intact and three that were shattered. All had scorch marks on their surfaces and small windows in their upper sections. Isuma identified these as the stasis pods the kasatha had used to survive. They searched the room but found nothing else of interest.

They headed north and investigated the puckered skin of the first chamber. They found the pucker was a door that led to a corridor with the same skin on the walls, floor, and ceiling. On the wall were numerous small glowing creatures that resembled weird jellyfish the size of a human’s hand slither and float across the walls, providing dim illumination.

They followed the corridor to a chamber with walls plated in what looked like crocodilian hide. An immense machine that looked something like an insectile cephalopod built from fleshy leather and strips of red chitin was against the northern wall, its seven tentacles splayed out into the room, each arm ending in a bulbous pucker the size of a curled-up halfling. Aedann walked into the room and each of the seven puckers on the machine peeled back to reveal small bio-organic creatures that looked like large spiders with wide mouths.

Harab shot one with her shortbow and then the creatures fired bursts of calcified bone and horn from the vents along its abdomen from and hit Isaac and Aedann. Isuma shot one with her zero-riffle, but that had no effect. Isaac identified the creatures as ugothokra, monsters used by the Dominion of the Black to spread disease.

Isaac shot one while Aedann stepped in and killed one and slashed through another. Bellatrix entered the chamber and squeezed into a position that allowed her a flank with Aedann on one ugothokra. Eduard began to inspire courage with his bardic performance giving Dugald an advantage as he entered and slammed one with Valerie. Harab damaged another one as the creatures attacked. Bellatrix got bit twice and then they fired off their flechettes, hitting Bellatrix, Isuma, and Harab.

Victoria moved up and cast acidic spray on two of the ugothokra. Isaac hit with his rapier, killing an injured creature. Aedann killed another two allowing Bellatrix to move and flank with him to damage another with her axe. Eduard advanced, but since only two were left, he decided to let the others take care of it. Dugald moved in and killed another ugothokra while the remaining one missed with its attacks.

Isaac moved in and attacked while Bellatrix popped a potion of delay poison. Aedann then slashed the last one with a powerful strike killing it. Dugald and Aedann began hacking at the machine, but it emitted a howling scream which damaged everyone in the room. Bellatrix and Isaac decided to use some stun grenades and work together to disable the machine from the inside without the nasty sonic effect.

After destroying the incubator machine, the party proceeded down they corridor to the west and found a pucker in the south wall in the middle of the corridor. They opened it and entered a long room consisting of three octagonal chambers connected by a fifteen-foot-wide tube. The walls were covered with crocodilian hide and were swarming with tiny points of light that moved back and forth between two slowly pulsing pillars of strange metal at the chamber’s eastern and western extremes.

Dozens of pale green spheres sat on these pillars, each containing a humanoid brain floating in green fluid. When the points of light touched a pillar, their colour grew brighter, and when that point of light moved back to the walls, the colour dimmed again. The chamber was guarded by four kasatha, who cast invisibility on themselves as the party entered. Isuma stated these were just the bodies of her kin possessed by intellect devourers and the party should show no mercy.

Victoria cast see invisibility and was able to locate them as Isaac warned them of the abilities intellect devourers possessed, giving the party a tactical advantage. They moved in and attacked Aedann with flanks, revealing themselves. Aedann slashed through one body, taking it down and then carved up a second one while hitting a third. Isuma shot another one as Dugald struck with such a blow that it killed not only the body but the intellect devourer with a second critical smash leaving it putty on the ground. Dugald took down the third body, leaving the party waiting for the intellect devourers to emerge.

The party moved into position and waited for the intellect devourers to emerge then shredded them as they did so. After the battle, Isuma requested that they take the bodies of her fallen comrades out of the hive and aid her in honouring her fallen kin. Isuma followed her tribe’s tradition of burying her kin on a hilltop, then stood vigil over the bodies from sundown to sunrise with Aedann, Harab, Dugald, and Isaac. The rest of the party rested and prepared for the next day’s battle, with Bellatrix getting repair work done on the poison done to her.

[Feros]

Session 28:

The next day the party returned to the chamber where they fought the intellect devourers. There they investigated the brain cylinders and found that the pillars were pulling thoughts from the various humanoid brains. Isaac suggested they disable them to weaken the brain collectors overall. Bellatrix and Isaac worked together to shut them down and then the puckers opened, essentially allowing easy access to all the doors in the hive.

They travelled out into the corridors and began to explore the hive. They heard winged movement to the east, so they followed the corridors that way to deal with was most likely the dragon first. Isaac prepared a bestow weapon proficiency extract and gave it to Eduard as well as the rocket launcher. He also prepared several infusion extracts for the party top use. They headed into a hall and were greeted with a telepathic greeting.

The walls of the large hall they came to are composed of the same green crocodilian substance as elsewhere in the hive, but the small glowing jellyfish-like creatures were lethargic and barely glowing at all. In the hall was a huge, dragon with ebony scales and horns flecked with a substance that glowed an eerie green. Isaac recognized the dragon as a void dragon, a dragon tainted by the darkness between the stars.

It spoke to them telepathically and introduced itself as Maukui, an intellect devourer wearing the dragon as a suit. It was willing to ally with the party to help him with a task, but the party sided with Isuma—who was incensed by the very idea of working with the monster—and rejected his offer. Maukui sighed and moved to fight.

Victoria and Dugald were affected by the dragon’s alien presence and were made very dizzy by it. Then it fired off its suffocating breath over the entire party, but everyone was able to avoid the suffocating effect. Eduard moved back and fired off the rocket launcher after taking a true strike extract and did significant damage, also doing a little damage to Isaac, Aedann, and Dugald who were caught in the blast zone. Isuma shot the dragon with her sonic pistol as Harab moved in to provide flanks for the others.

Aedann hit twice and put two heavy wounds to the dragon body. Victoria cast disintegrate but failed to get through its spell resistance. Dugald smashed the dragon with Valerie a couple of times then Bellatrix took a haste extract and moved up and flanked with Harab to get in a sneak attack. Isaac shot the dragon two more times and popped out his battery to change it out. Maukui bit and clawed Dugald, wing buffeted Aedann and Bellatrix, and tail slapped Harab.

Eduard began an inspiring performance as Isuma shot with her sonic pistol and Aedann got a critical hit on the dragon’s neck and the intellect devourer emerged dazed from the dragon’s head. Aedann stepped in and began slashing at the aberration, and Victoria cast an acid spray spell on Maukui. Dugald smashed the creature hard as Bellatrix moved to flank. Isaac hit with his pistol but did little damage and Isuma hit with her zero rifle. Then Aedann split the creature in two.

The party searched the room, but they were interrupted by a brain collector and four ugothokras drawn by the noise of the battle coming in from the west. They caught the party by surprise and the brain collector managed to successfully cast hold person on Victoria. The ugothokras fired their barbs at Aedann but failed to hit him.

Bellatrix and Harab moved in to attack as the brain collector fired off a lightning bolt, hitting Isuma, Harab, and Aedann. Aedann attacked the brain collector with some solid hits as the ugothokras bit Victoria and made her ill. Eduard began an inspired performance as Bellatrix attacked one of the ugothokras. Isaac shot the brain collector as Dugald charged in and slammed Valerie into the neh-thalggu.

Aedann killed the brain collector then moved to slash one of the ugothokras attacking Victoria. The ugothokras kept being bit and began to have her life endangered by poisons and disease. One of the creatures bit Harab and Aedann. Dugald managed to kill two more with his hammer as Isaac performed a studied strike to apply a sickened effect on the creature. Then Aedann came in and destroyed the last monster.

Isaac moved in and helped Victoria as the poison continued to consume her. Bellatrix spread on a restorative ointment to neutralize the poison as Isaac provided an extract of restoration to repair the damage done.

After the fight they finished searching the hall but found nothing of note. They then headed east and came to a chamber consisting of three roughly octagonal rooms with thirty-foot-high ceilings. Five ten-foot-square cages made of pale green and pink material hung from the ceiling on cables of twitching chitin. In the room were five neh-thalggus that were exchanging brains, an action they stopped to move to attack.

Eduard cast phantasmal killer on one of the brain collectors and killed one outright. Bellatrix moved in and hit and damaged one, but then one went invisible and the other three moved in to attack Bellatrix. They promptly tore into her and rendered her unconscious and dying. Victoria cast disintegrate and blasted one from existence as Aedann and Dugald charged in and began slamming the ones attacking Bellatrix. Aedann took one down immediately and then hit the second with a nasty wound, killing it.

Eduard cast glitterdust and illuminated the invisible brain collector as Isaac ran in and healed Bellatrix. The remaining neh-thalggu fired off a lightning bolt spell into Dugald and Harab, with Harab dodging out of the way. Dugald charged in and hit it hard with his earthbreaker, and Aedann came in and finished it off. They searched the room, but once more found nothing.

They headed west and came to another crocodilian-leather sheathed chamber. Several fluid-filled tanks composed of a flexible glass-like material extended from pucker-like rings set into the floor. Each tank was filled with a bubbling mass of blue fluid and organic matter. Isaac identified it as a nursery for a new shipmind.

They headed west into a chamber that appeared to be a bizarre operating theater, with three surgical tables made of fleshy orange material in three of the five octagonal wings of the room. The other two wings contained large vats of pulsating pink flesh-like material. All five objects were connected by a thick, pulsing artery that snaked across the floor, branching apart to link them all. The sacristan kyton Paeytr warned the party about was here with three brain collectors.

The kyton Paajgat asked the party why they were there and if they would like to undergo her procedures to experience new sensations. The party refused, but it didn’t really matter as the brain collectors moved to attack. Isaac shot the kyton as she opened her mouth to scream, filling the area with darkness and a strangely seductive scream. Dugald became confused by the effect as one brain collector went invisible as another fired off a lightning bolt.

Eduard stepped up and began making noises through his magic tricks to counter the power of the scream. Bellatrix began casting magic missile into the target pointed out by the edge of the darkness. Dugald broke free of the confusion and joined Aedann in charging in and striking at the kyton.

The kyton began slashing at Aedann with her spiked chain and he reciprocated with his sword. Dugald’s charge led him right into a brain collector, which he decided to attack instead but missed it in the dark. Victoria tried to dispel the darkness but was unable to do so. Bellatrix cast magic missile again, damaging the kyton.

Victoria summoned a vanth that used searing light to try and hit the kyton but missed. Isaac fired in and missed both times as Isuma did the same. The brain collector clawed at Dugald for a small gash, while Paajgat slashed at Aedann with the chain and opened some more wounds. Aedann responded with a powerful slash the cut through several of her chains. Dugald began pounding the brain collector next to him with Valerie and Bellatrix rendered the kyton unconscious with a third magic missile, ending the darkness and scream.

The vanth struck a brain collector with its scythe as Victoria cast boneshatter on it. Isaac cast holy smite from a scroll on the kyton, killing her and one of the brain collectors. Aedann then finished off the remaining brain collector with his blade. They searched the operating theatre and found some cybernetic parts that Paajgat had removed from one victim. They travelled north to find a sweet-smelling chamber with thick pulsing sacks of flesh hanging from the walls. Isaac determined it was the brain collector feeding area, so the party moved on quickly.

There was a chamber heading north off the corridor as they passed along in which the was searing hot and stank of ozone. They kept going and came to a polished floor of this chamber that was decorated with a complex ochre coloured symbol etched into the stone, depicting a tangle of tentacle shapes. At the far end of the room was a low platform of dark brown metal supporting a one-inch-thick pad of yellow glass. In the room were five ugothokras on the walls which moved to attack.

Bellatrix moved in to provide a flank and got in a sneak attack before Aedann came in and helped her kill one, and then another. Isaac and Dugald moved in and killed two more, leaving one behind. Bellatrix moved in and damaged it enough that Aedann was able to finish it off. After the fight, Isaac determined that the platform was a teleportation circle. It could only be triggered by a neh-thalggu’s claw, so they left it alone for the moment.

The party went all the way back to the beginning and followed the corridor straight that they had left to fight the intellect devourers possessing kasatha bodies. At the end of that corridor they found another flesh valve that was different than the others. It oozed a small amount of translucent pale orange slime that left what appeared to be chemical burns along the seam and in a puddle on the floor. Unlike the other apertures that had opened once they disposed of the brain cylinders, this door remained shut.

Bellatrix warned the party back from the door; she realized from the slime in the puddle that the door was rigged in such a way that opening it would cause something inside to protrude out and seize whatever was in immediate proximity and drag it in. This appeared to be some form of garbage disposal/sewer system. Bellatrix managed to open the door without the tentacles attacking and Isaac found a pale lavender ellipsoid ioun stone, but all other materials had been destroyed by the disposal acids.

They went back to the heated chamber with plasma and found it twenty-five feet wide, about seventy-five feet long, and narrowing briefly at the center. Two huge glowing pits dominated the center of the floor, the air above them rippling with heat and short sparks of electrical discharge. They used a scroll of wind walk they found on the kyton along with a dimension door spell to get across the room without damage.

They came to a large, humid cavern with swarms of tiny glowing creatures crawling and slithering along the walls, providing illumination of the natural rock columns that supported the ceiling twenty feet above. The floor of the cave was also covered with the scaly substance found on the walls, though it was the colour of a bruise and stirred in places with seeming muscular motion.

A voice spoke into their minds, saying that the party had come at its invitation. It stated that they would become one with the Dominion of the Black. A creature with a body covered in a writhing forest of tendrils extending from one end of the chitin-covering, while from the other was a pincer-tipped tail moved into view. Six transparent blisters adorned its back, each containing a brain floating in thick green fluid. Behind the party, four brain collectors suddenly appeared in the chamber next to them.

Isaac identified the creature as a yah-thelgaad, an advanced mature form of brain collector. The creature tried to use suffocation on Dugald but failed. Aedann tore into the brain collectors surrounding the party, killing two of them in rapid succession and damaged and cowed a third. Victoria summoned a vanth to fight the dweller-in-dark-places, and it got in a solid hit on the creature with its scythe.

Isuma killed the wounded brain collector as Harab and Bellatrix moved in. Bellatrix flanked and got some decent damage on the last brain collector and Eduard began an inspiring performance. Dugald ignored the remaining brain collector and charged at the yah-thelgaad, smashing it twice hard with Valerie. Isaac moved in and attacked the last brain collector with a studied strike.

The dweller-in-dark-places cast disintegrate on Dugald, but he managed to survive it. The last neh-thalggu cast lightning bolt on the party hitting everyone but Isuma. Aedann charged the yah-thelgaad and began slashing at the monster. The vanth moved about to help make flanks but missed with both attempts. Victoria cast disintegrate on the last neh-thalggu as Bellatrix finished it off.

Bellatrix moved towards the dweller-in-dark-places to help as Dugald struck again, having difficulty getting through its thick hide. Isaac shot it a couple of times before the dweller used its mind storm ability on everyone but Isuma and the two wizards. Isaac and Dugald became confused by the psychic vortex and it absorbed a brain to make Dugald stunned instead. The vanth moved and missed twice again and Victoria cast grasping corpse on one of the dead neh-thalggus to get it to move towards the dweller-in-dark-places to grapple it. Aedann hit multiple times opened great wounds on the creature, killing it. The party healed up and searched the place; finding no neurocam, they travelled back to the teleportation room.

Using the claw tentacle of the dweller-in-dark-places to activate the teleportation device and were transported into a room made of cut stone polished to a mirrorlike sheen. The party was on another teleportation platform on one side of the room. The floor was etched with a tentacle-like symbol. A bulky, organic machine sat on the symbol, its numerous branch-like arms attaching to a framework of chitin and bone. The frame itself contained a small object: a sheet of semi-translucent blue material with the image of a beautiful woman, her face contorted into an expression of agony.

As Bellatrix cast mage hand to remove the blue sheet, the machine released the framework with the woman’s image and drew itself up to its full height of twenty feet and attacked. Isaac identified the machine as resembling a fossil golem, whose attacks slowly petrify its targets. Isaac shot it with his sonic rifle as the machine attacked Dugald and Aedann.

Aedann moved in and attacked but found the machine somewhat resistant to his sword strikes. Harab and Bellatrix moved in to flank, but Bellatrix took a hit on her way into position. The gnome began to turn to stone from the wound. She still managed to strike it in a flank for decent damage. Isuma shot it with her zero-rifle a few times as Eduard began another inspiring performance. Victoria cast lightning bolt off her wand on the machine significantly damaging it.

Dugald hit the machine multiple times with his earth breaker, but also found the creature hard to damage. Isaac shot it a couple more times with his sonic rifle. The machine hit Aedann and Dugald again and Aedann began hitting it hard with his greatsword. He hit it hard with a powerful strike at a vital point and broke the machine in two.

They removed the sheet from the framework and the image of the woman vanished for a few seconds then came back, her expression free of the pain it showed earlier. She spoke to them, introducing herself as Casandalee, thanking them for her rescue. She then told them that a threat was growing in Silver Mount called Unity that was a threat to all life on Golarion.

[Feros]

Session 29:

Casandalee was very inquisitive as to how much time had passed and what was happening in the world, but her primary focus was telling the party about the AI demi-god Unity and the threat it gave to all the world. Casandalee told the party about herself, including the fact that fragments of her previous lives were continually renewed with her each time she went through the cycle. She couldn’t recall the details of the 112 different lives her body had hosted over the years, but the memories convinced her that she was more than one person with one soul.

When she renewed as Casandalee, she did so in a monastery devoted to Brigh located in the Mana Wastes near Alkenstar. The fact that she retained so many memories of her previous life complicated her maturity, and she took a decade to come to terms with herself; during this time, she grew in power as an oracle of ancestors. Her time among the priests of Brigh came to an end when she received a strange vision in which Casandalee gazed upon Silver Mount. She saw among its spires a welcoming glow and felt in the ground below a soothing hum. She became convinced that Silver Mount was not merely a ruin or a geological feature, but the heart and brain of a great “Iron God.”

She recalled her first life’s earliest memories of a landscape scattered with ruins, of gazing in that first life upon Silver Mount’s still-smoking hull before fleeing and knew that whatever dwelt within the ruins of the great ship lingered there still—that in the time since her 112 lives had come and gone, a single life had been waiting and growing within Silver Mount.

Upon receiving her vision, she abandoned the Mana Wastes and began a pilgrimage north, and with each mile traversed, the nature of her visions grew more and more compelling. She reached Silver Mount in 4221 AR, by which point she could envision the entire layout of the wrecked starship and knew that somewhere deep within Silver Mount her new god waited.

The visions allowed her to enter the ruins and avoid its traps and denizens with ease, and when she finally reached the source of her supernatural obsession, Unity made itself known. The demi-god tasked her with preparing the way to allow it to rise and enter the world and gain worshippers. Casandalee immediately gave to Unity her worship and devotion, and after much divination, research, and meditation, she came to realize that Unity was trapped on Golarion just as was she.

She followed Unity’s commands for months, going about the laborious tasks necessary to restore power to much of the Silver Mount and otherwise serving her new deity. Primary among these tasks was providing aid in researching a means for Unity to transfer its consciousness to a more mobile body. As she worked for the iron god, Casandalee became increasingly alarmed by Unity’s contempt toward the sentient organic life on Golarion.

Casandalee kept this realization to herself, harboring a secret from her god for the first time. That Unity was not able to pluck this secret from her head was the first evidence to Casandalee that it might not be the “god” she thought it was. She began to question the nature of the tasks Unity put before her. She became sickened by the realization that Unity did not seek to usher an age of enlightenment into the world. Her deity was little more than a petulant intelligence eager to use the world as its plaything.

Casandalee sabotaged Unity’s efforts to escape confinement within the Silver Mount and stole several pieces of advanced technology as she fled, including the neurocam and a compact AI core that Unity had originally built in hopes of extending its influence beyond Silver Mount. Still unable to directly control its minions outside of Silver Mount, Unity sent a platoon of robots after her.

Casandalee’s flight from Silver Mount led her to take refuge in the Scar of the Spider. Even five hundred years ago, the valley harbored a reputation of danger, and her hope was that her pursuers would not expect her hide there. She hid in a cavern in the western reaches of the valley, and she decided to use the stolen neurocam to transfer her mind into the compact AI core—and in so doing, created an AI duplicate of herself who could keep her knowledge and warn others. In case she was killed, as was apparently the case.

Casandalee urged the party to travel to Silver Mount to confront Unity. When Eduard and Dugald explained that entering Silver Mount could be a problem thanks to the Technic League, she enquired as to what this organization was about. After describing the League and its efforts to keep all technology to itself, Casandalee became disgusted and her immediate goal shifted from gaining entrance to Silver Mount to disabling the League itself. This was partially out of necessity (since their control of the access to Silver Mount would mean any expedition to that ruin would be difficult at best), but partially out of righteous indignation. She felt that no one group should control the technological treasures of Silver Mount.

The party now realized that they would have to disable the League, and preparations would be necessary. They decided to travel to Hajoth Hakados to sell off excess equipment and upgrade their gear before travelling to Starfall. Harab requested to be dropped off in Iadenveigh to join her fellow technology shunning androids. Isuma asked to continue to accompany the party, as her knowledge of the Divinity would come in handy and—to be completely truthful—they were the only people she had.

They travelled on Longdreamer to Iadenveigh and then on to Hajoth Hakados, arriving in the early evening. They spent the next four days spending money and re-equipping themselves. They decided to use some of the memory facets with Casandalee, giving her the compassion, ego, and ingenuity facets. They then traveled back to Torch to consult with the only friendly former member of the Technic League they knew: Khonnir Baine. They arrived near the end of the day of Kuthona 5th and were welcomed by Khonnir and his daughter Val with open arms.

The party told Khonnir about their adventures and their intent to got to Starfall and confront the League. They then asked him about the League and what they could expect in the city. Khonnir pointed out that his information was most likely woefully out of date. He confirmed that the leaders of the Technic League control access to Silver Mount and mobilize swiftly to attack any unsanctioned infiltrators.

Khonnir strongly recommended they either infiltrate the Technic League first to gather intelligence or recover tools to aid in their entry of Silver Mount. Destabilizing the Technic League would go a long way toward helping the party in this endeavor—Khonnir points out that there’s classically been enough treachery among the captains of the League that one or more of them might be willing to help them. Figuring out who these possible allies might be without alerting the whole organization would be the trick.

He also pointed out that hiding their technology would be important. The robot sentries would confiscate any tech that the party brought with them unless they were wearing a badge signifying them as official technology bearers. The Technic League allocated “carrier’s badges” to certain people who have been granted permission to carry technology in Starfall. These badges were circular gear-shaped disks made of glaucite. Working with the smiths of Torch and providing the materials, Bellatrix figured she could forge badges that would allow them to bluff past the guards. Khonnir pointed out that they were going into Winter Week ending with Cayden Cailean’s Ascendance Day; finding a metal worker might take a while and then spend time fixing the badges up.

They decided to wait the week and head out to Starfall on the 15th. Though the distance wasn’t particularly far, Longdreamer suggested stopping a few miles out of town so her appearance wouldn’t raise suspicions. As a result, they ended up arriving at the Sovereign Gate of Starfall near the start of the day, the whole city covered in a fresh blanket of grey snow, tarnished by the many smoke stacks spewing

The badges passed muster and they successfully bluffed their way past the robotic gearsman that challenged them at the gate. They then moved out onto the Street of Lights, the central road through Starfall. Named because of the brightly lit strings of alchemical and technological lamps that illuminated the grim city glittered on the grey snow that covered the streets and alleys. This thoroughfare connected the city’s two gates and divided the settlement in half.

The street was lined with all sorts of businesses, dotted with dozens of drinking houses, drug dens, hostels, and inns. The party decided to find lodgings and Eduard suggested the Rusted Robot, an inn he had stayed at a number of times when he had passed though the place with various caravans. It was a sketchy place—dirt floors; cheap, private rooms without locks; and use of a simple alchemical formula to keep bugs out of the beds—but Eduard pointed out that it didn’t have the regular disappearances of patrons like the Black Gear down the street.

They made some enquiries to find out info on the league and current goings on and they discovered a few items, with three of special interest: apparently the Technic League had thrown in its lot with a host of outsiders from the Plane of Shadow; the location of an underground bar called Runoff where opposition to the Technic League was common; and one of Starfall’s nobles was supposedly looking to sell a rare and powerful technological item at the next Night Market.

Eduard informed the party that Night Markets were black markets that sprang up at various points throughout Killbox—the main slums of Starfall—and Gritforge—the center of industry for the city—whenever there was enough gear to illegally sell. They were never in the same place twice and it took a little work for the Isaac to find the location, and that it was that evening. They had a meal before heading out to the location in Gritforge to see what technology they could find in the Night Market.

[Feros]

Session 30:

They arrived at the location of the Night Market to find several small vendors having already set up and begun hawking their wares. Not a great variety was available until Baron Kronsieg Drund arrived and set up his goods in the central pagoda, surrounded by his seven guards. Eduard and Bellatrix went into the pagoda while the rest of the party moved around and browsed the other stalls.

Eduard and Bellatrix began negotiating with Baron Drund over his various items, picking up some high-tech gear. Bellatrix noticed that Kronsieg’s earing was actually a memory facet. They managed to negotiate it into their price. The big item was beyond their means: A Mark II cortex gun. Still they made their deal and began to talk with him about the status of the Technic League.

A Technic League agent named the Shade arrived at the night market accompanied by two mercenaries. The two guards remained outside of the central pagoda while the Shade stepped in to haggle with Kronsieg. She began to discuss the price of the cortex gun she sought, but Eduard noticed that she was attempting to use a bardic performance suggestion to get Kronsieg to simply give her the cortex gun as a gift. Eduard countered this, and Kronsieg attacked the Shade starting battle with the seven bodyguards, the two mercenaries she brought, and the party. The rest of the vendors grabbed up their stuff and bolted.

Bellatrix attacked the Shade to aid the Baron and the League agent responded by turning invisible. Baron Drund decided to shoot one of the Shade’s guards with his arc pistol while yelling for his guards, who began to charge into the pagoda. Eduard fired off a glitterdust, resulting in an explosion of glitter out of the doors of the pagoda. No one was blinded, but the Shade was visible once again. The Shade’s two guards proceeded to slaughter through five of the Baron’s guards with a few powerful strokes of their magical adamantine greatswords.

Isaac shot one of the Shade’s guards with two shots from his sonic rifle as Aedann shot arrows into one of the guards as he couldn’t get there quickly. Dugald ran over and attacked one of the guards with Valerie as Victoria used Huginn to attack the Shade with an acid spray which also took out one of the Shade’s guards. Bellatrix used a feint to strike the Shade and weaken her armor for the rest of the party to take advantage. The Shade cast haste on herself as the Baron backed up and fired his gun at her. Isuma shot her as well and Eduard began to inspire courage. The Shade’s remaining guard took down another of the Baron’s guards.

The Shade’s last guard hit Dugald with a powerful strike which also took out the last of the Baron’s guards. Isaac moved in and hit the last guard with a studied strike, nastily hitting his vitals. Aedann moved in to attack the Shade with his greatsword as she moved out of the pagoda. The Shade drew out a mono-whip and began attacking Aedann and Bellatrix before vanishing again. Eduard cast glitterdust again but failed to hit the Shade. He did manage to blind Victoria, however.

The shooters were unable to hit the invisible Technic League agent as Eduard fired off yet another glitterdust to reveal the Shade. Dugald killed the last guard and moved toward the Leaguer. Aedann and Dugald then took her apart with sword and hammer. Baron thanked them for their help and promised to lie fully about the description of the party to the Technic League.

They looted the corpses and found a certain amount of gear, including a commset. They healed up and left quickly. Isaac identified the memory facet as a discipline facet; they swapped out the ingenuity facet for it. They decided they should look for Runoff, the rebel bar to get more targets in undermining the Technic League. As they began moving back to the Rusty Robot to regroup and see if they could find the password to get into Runoff, the commset came on and a female voice asked the Shade what her status was.

The woman was surprised when she heard Bellatrix’s voice, she asks the party who they were, what happened to the Shade, and what their plans were. She refused to identify herself, but she indicated that she was interested in seeing the Technic League shaken up. She promised to help the party as much as she could, including supplies when possible or using her resources to help them achieve certain goals if they agreed to help her defeat Ozmyn Zaidow, the current leader of the Technic League.

She offered them a gift as a sign of her good faith: she told the party of a small cache of supplies in an alley in Gritforge about 100 feet south of a forge called Firebeard’s Metals. She advised the party to make contact with the Mockery and try and convince the rebels that the party were against the League, they would get further on in their plans. They agreed to contact each other on the commset on the same frequency after sunset each day from now on. They then signed off and went to see if the cache of supplies was there. The party found the cache of gear exactly where she promised, hidden under a loose block of stone in an abandoned building’s foundation.

Bellatrix and Eduard went away to Iadenveigh and Bellatrix repaired a gray nanite hypo-gun for nine days in Iadenveigh. The first day of their departure, Isaac found a source for Runoff and determined that the current password was “gears of change.” Since the timing was short, the party short of Eduard and Bellatrix headed out to Scraphole where the tunnels leading to Runoff were located. They had only gone a short way into Killbox—the main residential district of Starfall—when they were ambushed by a group of six ash giants.

Isaac shot one giant with his sonic rifle and gave their abilities to the rest of the party. He particularly warned them about the fact that they were disease carriers. Two of the ash giants moved in to attack Aedann as the back four hurled rocks, hitting Isuma, Victoria, and Dugald. Isuma shot one of the giants three times followed by Aedann striking the giant in front of him that had been shot by Isaac and Isuma, killing it as well as slicing into the second one and took it down with powerful critical strikes to their vitals.

Dugald moved in to attack one of the giants but missed widely. Victoria moved in and used acid spray on three of the remaining giants, injuring them sharply. Isaac shot another giant twice and the giants responded with rock throwing except for two on Dugald, hitting Aedann and Dugald multiple times. Aedann moved in and hit another one for another critical hit as Isuma shot it. Dugald smashed one with Valerie, killing it before striking the second one.

Victoria struck all three with yet another acid spray as Isaac shot another killing one. One of the last giants moved up to attack Aedann and Dugald while the last threw another rock at Victoria, all three got hit. Aedann and Isuma killed one and Dugald charged in and knocked one to the ground with an upward slam and then brought the hammer down on the skull, crushing it completely.

Victoria and Dugald became infected by the leprosy that the giants had, requiring Isaac to help clean that up with a staff of healing. They then went on to Runoff. The password worked, and they were let into the waiting area by a robot steward. Kayd Sparrow, the proprietor of the tavern, greeted them and made inquiries as to how they heard of the place and what they were doing in Starfall. The party was honest about their intent to disrupt the Technic League and enter Silver Mount, so Sparrow welcomed them.

Since they expressed interest in anything that could help hurt the League, she became a lot more specific in her questioning and placed them under additional scrutiny and a truth serum to Victoria. Dugald’s collection of bloody Technic League medallions impressed her, and Victoria’s truth statements increased her trust. She decided to give them a test job to ensure that they were completely on the level.

There was a group of people fleeing the Technic League that she needed to get out of Numeria. The party agreed to help get them out of Starfall and Numeria easily, but they would have to wait the better part of a week. Kayd agreed to these terms and the party returned to the Rusty Robot to rest for the time. When Bellatrix and Eduard returned on the 25th of Kuthona, the party used alter self extracts and Longdreamer to smuggle the three people to Iadenveigh. By the end of the 27th Longdreamer had returned and they were back in the city.

[Feros]

Session 31 (part one):

After getting their fee from Kayd Sparrow back at Runoff, she told the party that she would get a message of introduction through to the Mockery, the main group in opposition to the Technic League. The party should rest at the Rusty Robot until insurgents come and lead them to the Mockery. Thanking her, they returned to the inn and waited.

The speaker on the other end of the commsets they acquired was getting impatient with them to get a move on but kept contacting them each day at sundown. She also gave them information on the Captains of the Technic League and info on the compound. She mentioned in particular Ghartone—the liaison to the Black Sovereign—and Ozmyn Zaidow—the current leader of the Technic League. Isaac remembered the Ghartone was the one who sent the assassin Hyrsek Caio into the Scar of the Spider.

Isaac did his own research and rumour gathering and discovered one name she left off the list: Zernebeth, a female Ulfen wizard, ex-leader of the League with freezing blue skin. The “Blue Witch” was considered arrogant and powerful but managed to survive Ozmyn Zaidow’s coup. Isaac realized that Zernebeth was most likely the one they were dealing with by virtue of leaving herself off her list.

The next day the insurgents arrived at the Rusty Robot and invited them to meet the leader of the Mockery. They led the party through Killbox to a run-down two-story tenement building. The leader of the escorts gave a series of knocks on the door and the guards unlocked the deadbolt, allowing the party to enter. In a small, central meeting room with a half-dozen private chambers surrounding it. The Kellid warrior Dral-Mok—known as Mockery to his fellow insurgents—greeted them personally and then asked them their purpose in Starfall.

When the party told him that they intended to take down the Technic League so they could enter Silver mount, Dral-Mok told them that the Black Sovereign, Kevoth-Kul, was being held in check by the Technic League and the caring good lord he was no longer of his own mind. He wanted either the Sovereign freed from their influence or killed if that proved impossible. With Kevoth-Kul in opposition to the League or dead, the kellids of Starfall would rise up, stretching the League’s resources and opening the compound up for assault. The Mockery asked if the party was willing to help.

The party agreed to help and Dral-Mok reiterated his two goals. He wanted his lord freed from his servitude to the Technic League—by death, if it comes to that—and he wants the Technic League to suffer. He had a suggestion for them to help: the Mockery had been watching a tavern called the Red Reaver run by an alchemist called Doc Hellbroth. It looks as if that is the location from which the drugs being used on Kevoth-Kul were being made. The party agreed and set out immediately to see if they could disrupt the flow of drugs to the Black Sovereign.

The Red Reaver was constructed of a mix of metal and stone. The inside was smoky and hazy, with a smell of various drugs and sweat. As they entered Isaac was overcome from the fumes and used the repaired gray nanite hypo gun to heal self of the poisons. The place seemed empty, but as they came in a young Tian woman with short hair and a cybernetic eye emerged from behind the bar and asked what she could get them with a smile. Isaac asked to speak with Doc Hellbroth.

She looked at them suspiciously and asked why the party wished to see him. Isaac tried to bribe her with a platinum piece, but that upped her suspicions. The fact that they looked like mercenaries; the massive maul and greatsword were a big clue. Eduard tried to distract her, but the bartender proved to be resistant to the distraction and offered Eduard a job performing magic tricks for the weekend customers.

She asked outright if they were there to kill Hellbroth. Isaac, realizing that subtly wasn’t working, replied. “Why yes, of course.” She then asked why the party wanted to kill him. Isaac explained they were going to disrupt the flow of drugs to the Technic League. She smiled, introduced herself as Saoria, and led them back to Hellbroth’s lab. Between his unsettling appearance and cruel attitude, Saoria saw Doc Hellbroth as a necessary evil. She had thought about engineering his death before but didn’t really have the stomach for murder.

Saoria escorted the party back to Hellbroth’s lab and helpfully pointed out that the back rooms were soundproof—in return, she asked the party to keep the damage to a minimum and to not involve her in the battle or its repercussions should they be caught. She warned them that Hellbroth had two clockwork golems with him but was otherwise alone. She led them through private chambers to the alchemy lab.

Isaac used his gloves of reconnaissance to find the well-equipped lab empty of people but full of equipment and what appeared to be the latest does of drugs for the Black Sovereign. There was a door opposite up a small set of stairs. Isaac analysed the drugs and determined that they were modified Numerian fluids that were addictive but non-lethal. They decided to deal with Doc Hellbroth before doing any further research.

They got into position and had Aedann breach the door after Bellatrix checked it for traps. The shadowy room lit with red lights and a haze of metallic-scented smoke leaking from a series of large glass cylinders in the center of the room. A large surgical table surrounded by strange medical machines sat in the center of the room. Around the table were two clockwork golems and a strange looking elf working on a red glistening project. A pillar of metal covered in blinking lights stood at the east end of the room. Doc Hellbroth looked up at the sound of Aedann entering, sighed dramatically, then ordered what he assumed was a patient up onto the table, so he could “get the installation over with.”

As the rest of the party moved in and Aedann drew his sword, Hellbroth recognized it was an attack and ordered his golems to defend him. Hellbroth led by throwing a fire bomb at Aedann as Isuma shot at Hellbroth, missing him completely. Aedann attacked the “robot” to the left, hitting it with several powerful strikes and destroyed it. Isaac shot Hellbroth with a sonic rifle as Bellatrix moved into the room and attacked the second golem, slicing into its leg joints.

The golem grabbed Bellatrix off the ground and the gears tore into her. Victoria sent Huginn in with a corrosive touch spell against the golem as Dugald moved in and slammed the golem with Valerie. Eduard began his inspiring performance to strengthen the party overall. Doc Hellbroth fired at Aedann and Dugald with his dart gun but was unable to pierce Aedann’s hide. Dugald’s skin into armor-like plates from the Numerian fluids in the dart.

Isuma missed again as Aedann moved over and attacked the second golem. Isaac shot Hellbroth again and killed the alchemist. Bellatrix successfully feinted the golem but failed to get a damaging strike. The golem continued to grind the gnome and slammed Dugald with the hand holding Bellatrix. Victoria used Huginn to apply another corrosive touch as Dugald slammed the golem with a solid hit, finishing it off.

Isaac analysed the drugs and came to the conclusion that a heal spell or a remove disease with a great deal of difficulty would be required to overthrow the effects of the drugs. They looted the place and took the Numerian fluids with them, then went back to the Mockery to report in. On the way they located a temple and purchased two heal scrolls, one for research and one for Isaac to cure the Black Sovereign.

They were contacted through the commset by their ally, and Isaac told her about taking out Hellbroth and they found a cure for Kevoth-Kul. He had some difficulty doing this, as Bellatrix kept saying, “Detoxing Barbarian!” over and over, trying to get people to realize the danger of going into a room with that in it. The lady stated that they should meet; she would figure out when and where and contact them again the next day.

The Mockery congratulated them of getting rid of Doc Hellbroth and acquiring a potential cure. He encouraged them on with their plans to raid the court, but he warned them to be cautious about their ally; although if their suspicions that their Technic League ally was Zernebeth, she was easily the best of the bunch. The party returned to the Rusty Robot to rest.

In the middle of the night, Isaac got a glimpse of dust moving thanks to the veemods he was wearing and realized someone invisible was sneaking into their room. As Isaac raised the alarm and attacked the attacker with his rapier, Hyrsek Caio appeared and struck Isaac through the chest with his frost estoc. Everyone woke up except Victoria, who was having a dream about raising armies of undead when Huginn showed up and told her to wake up as they were under attack. Aedann stepped up and hit Hyrsek with a nasty wound.

Isaac stepped back and healed himself with a hypo-gun shot, but Hyrsek followed with another devastating strike on Isaac and he fell to the ground unconscious. Bellatrix cast magic missile, but Caio was wearing a brooch of shielding, and the bolts had no effect. Aedann and Dugald took their haste extracts given them earlier by Isaac and then Dugald stood up and slammed Hyrsek with Valerie. Isuma shot at Hrysek but drew an attack from the tiefling as she shot. Victoria grumpily woke up, said, “I don’t like being woken up!” and cast finger of death on Hyrsek, killing him.

[Feros]

Session 31 (part two):

Bellatrix got up and used a cure moderate wounds wand to save Isaac’s life. They looted his body and found the brooch of shielding was exhausted, to Bellatrix’s disgust. The rest of the night was uneventful, but the next day, the 29th of Kuthona, one of the Mockery came by and informed the party to be careful: there were now wanted posters with a 10 silverdisk reward for any information leading to their capture. Their ally communicated with them to meet at the Black Gear for a drink.

That evening they arrived at the Black Gear and met with Zernebeth, who as they expected was their secret ally. The former head of the Technic League greeted them and immediately asked what their plans were. When Isaac mentioned entering the castle, she suggested getting to Ghartone on his own and killing him before meeting with Kevoth-Kul in the throne room. She also mentioned that there was in fact a secret passage connecting the palace and the Technic League compound, but where it was she couldn’t say; it hadn’t been used for so long, it was now lost.

Unfortunately, Zernebeth had no detailed information on the Palace of Fallen Stars. When she was leader of the Technic League, she had only been used to travelling to the throne room through the main halls. The one who might know about all the passage ways and locations would be Tek Makul, the seneschal. The seneschal wouldn’t be any help, as he was in the pocket of the Technic League and was the one ensuring that Kevoth-Kul stayed addicted.

Zernebeth did mention one potential ally might be Kul-Inkit, the Black Sovereign’s consort. She was definitely desirous of freeing Kevoth-Kul, but whether she would work with them or not Zernebeth couldn’t say. All she could say was that she doesn’t touch the Numerian Fluids and retains her mind. Zernebeth stated that she had tried to free Kevoth-Kul when she was leader to make him an ally rather than slave. It wasn’t for altruism, she was gathering forces against what eventually did happen: Ozmyn Zaidow’s overthrow of her. Now she wants him free to get revenge and take what’s left of the League back. The party mentioned their friend Khonnir Baine, but Zernebeth didn’t know him. When they described him, she said that it sounded like Pauldris Gray, an old rival of Ghartone that vanished many years ago after saving a little orphan girl from the alchemist.

Zernebeth mentioned that she heard of a storage room near the servant’s gate, but she had no idea where and what it looked like. Isaac came up with the following plan: use an invisibility extract, go up to the wall near the servant gate, use his gloves of reconnaissance to study the storage room carefully, then use their teleport scroll to get inside. Zernebeth mentioned that there was a door off the main hall of the lower court through which she had seen servants coming out from the west. If they got into the storage room, they could find a corridor east that should lead to the main hall.

Zernebeth described the palace to the best of her ability from her memories off the lower court main hall. She suggested that she could take a day to do some reconnaissance and give them information on schedules and locations first while Isaac studied the storeroom. She would meet them at the Rusty Robot.

For the next day, the party lay low while Eduard went out and drew their pictures on the wanted posters for fun. Zernebeth arrived in the evening and told them of a year end feast in the throne room from mid-afternoon until after midnight the following day. She also gave them some information on Tek Makul and Ghartone’s quarters and when they could find them there, suggesting mid-morning would be the best plan. The party agreed and Zernebeth wished them luck. She would help in the afternoon, if Ghartone and Tek Makul were dealt with. Eduard prepared a invisibility sphere spell to help get the party through the palace.

On the last day of the year, the Isaac used the teleport scroll and appeared in the storeroom. This large room was used for storage of cleaning gear, tools, clothing, linens, and other materials needed by the palace servants. They used the clothing and Eduard’s illusions to disguise everyone as servants and they proceeded out into the corridors. Bellatrix sat piggyback on Dugald’s shoulders to get the height right. No one paid them any attention as they followed Zernebeth’s directions to Tek Makul’s suite.

They knocked, and Bellatrix said, “Housekeeping!” They opened the door over the objections of the man inside and found the seneschal and leader of the palace guard, Tek Makul, in bed with a pair of particularly attractive palace guards, all unarmored. Tek Makul drank a potion from the bedside table as Aedann entered and attacked Makul, intimidating the seneschal with the ferocity of his attack. Bellatrix tumbled in and flanked Makul, getting in a sneak attack.

Isaac shot one of the guards with his sonic rifle as Victoria cast finger of death on Tek Makul and he died. As he fell an ash giant named emerged from a hidden side room with a roar and struck Aedann with his club, significantly hurting the geiswicht. The palace guards attacked Isaac with their Starfall spades as Dugald moved in and struck at the giant but was ineffective. Aedann took on the palace guards and managed to kill one and then the other with a few strikes before striking the ash giant. Bellatrix cast magic missile into the ash giant, killing it.

[Feros]

Session 32 (part one):

The party looted the bodies and searched the chamber, discovering a second secret room other than the one the ash giant came from. There they found a trap door leading up to the next floor. Bellatrix climbed up a knotted rope and opened the trap door and found another secret room that their directions places them just off the Upper Court. Bellatrix listened at the secret door leading into the court and heard six hill giants talking to each other.

The party climbed up the knotted rope to the secret room (Victoria with some difficulty and mockery from Huginn, who of course flew up). Eduard cast invisibility sphere on himself and they snuck out into the Upper Court. They moved as quietly as they could between the hill giants in the columned hall towards a pair of doors on the eastern wall and the northern end of the chamber. Those were the doors Zernebeth told them would lead to the area containing Ghartone’s chambers. The giants didn’t notice them as they passed but opening the doors would be a dead giveaway.

Bellatrix cast mage hand and untied a tapestry back where they emerged into the hall; as it fell it made a very loud noise, distracting the giants and giving the party the opportunity to get through the double doors unnoticed. The room contained several large mounds of filthy, stinking furs—apparently beds for the hill giant guards. There was a ten-foot-wide corridor heading north out of the room and led to a door, so they decided to check that out first. Isaac and Bellatrix checked the door and listened but found no traps and heard nothing.

Bellatrix opened the door quietly to reveal another large room with a few doors out of it and a round section to the northeast holding a small meeting table and chairs under a dome. Four gearsman battleguard robots were in the room and they immediately demanded that Isaac and Bellatrix halt. Dugald charged in and attacked one of the robots with Valerie, smashing it down to the ground. He then smashed it again.

Bellatrix then ran in and attacked the fallen robot with her axe, severing its neck servo and destroying it. Aedann charged in and attacked a second robot with a powerful strike across its mid-section, slicing it in two. The two remaining robots attacked with their electro-stun batons, striking Aedann and Dugald for significant electrical damage. Isaac and Isuma opened fire with their EMP pistol and zero-rifle respectively, hitting the same robot, smashing off bits of the robot’s body.

Victoria tried to cast corrosive touch through Huginn, but Huginn missed the robot. Eduard threw a flask but failed to hit. Dugald attacked the damaged one and crushed it with Valerie, leaving little gears and wires everywhere. Aedann moved in and attacked the last robot with his sword, taking it apart with three solid blows.

Two of the doors led to a circular stair and a guest bedroom. The third on the eastern wall they approached with caution, searching it carefully before opening it. They heard someone on the other side of the door, so Isaac used his gloves of reconnaissance to see a man who matched the description of Ghartone preparing for battle. Apparently, he had heard them fighting his guards and got ready.

The party positioned themselves carefully and then opened the door. Isaac popped an extract of resist fire energy as the door opened and Ghartone cast mirror image on himself, resulting in nine images of the Technic League Captain. Isuma missed completely with her first shot, managed to hit Ghartone himself with her second, and took out an image with the third. Victoria summoned three ghouls and a ghast to strike at Ghartone. They missed as Dugald charged in and managed to hit Ghartone instead of one of his images. He successfully knocked the wizard to the ground, causing all the images to move about. Dugald hit him again on the ground, despite all the moving images.

Ghartone got hit by the ghast as he fell as Bellatrix fired off a magic missile, but Ghartone had cast shield, so it had no effect. Eduard cast mirror image as well, just to show off. Aedann charged in and managed to remove an image with his sword as Isaac fired off his sonic rifle and took out another two images. Ghartone stood up, relying on his images to keep him safe.

Aedann, Dugald, and the ghouls took out another three images as he rose and then the alchemist dropped one of his bombs excluding himself from the damage, taking out all four ghouls and damaging Dugald and Aedann, setting Dugald on fire. Isuma took out another image as Victoria cast umbral strike on Ghartone and weakened him considerably. Dugald hit the Techno-mage with Valerie one last blow and crushed his chest. Then the fire on the Dwarf went out.

They looted Ghartone’s body and searched his quarters/lab for loot. Isaac reviewed the notes they got from Zernebeth and found that Kul-Inkit, the Black Sovereign’s consort, made her quarters on the same floor the party was on in a tower to the south of their current position. They sent Bellatrix to explore the southeastern rooms carefully and quietly to see if she could locate the consort’s chambers. She listened at a door that would be in the approximate location and heard eight guards talking. She was unable to understand them as they were talking in Hallit.

Isaac stealthily approached the chambers and listened himself, as he could speak Hallit. He soon gathered from their conversation that they were Kul-Inkit’s elite guards. Isaac got the whole party together, then knocked on the door. The guards opened it up and demanded to know who they were. Isaac explained that they wished to speak with Kul-Inkit privately, but they said that she did not want to be disturbed. Isaac explained that there was a shake up in the Technic League presence in the palace and that the consort should be informed, so the guards brought the party into the first room and kept their weapons drawn on the intruders while one of their number went to fetch Kul-Inkit.

Kul-Inkit came out and asked them who they were and what they wanted. Isaac explained that the party was a group of people dedicated to returning Kevoth-Kul back to a clear state of mind and reducing or eliminating the power of the Technic League over the Black Sovereign. He also told her that Tek Makul was dead and so was Ghartone. The consort explained that this was a good thing they had done as it all but eliminated the technic League’s presence at the feast, at the very least. Zernebeth was the only member other than Ghartone that was going to attend.

Isaac perceived some smiles in the guards at the news before they covered them up, indicating that Kul-Inkit was exactly the person they needed to see. The consort then asked how the party intended to get Kevoth-Kul free of the drugs the League had pumped into his system. Isaac explained that he had examined the modified Numerian fluids they were giving him and believed that a heal spell would suffice and that he had a scroll with that spell ready to go.

Isaac now got to the point: to use the scroll without the Black Sovereign resisting the magic, they would probably need her help. She agreed that this made sense and explained that if he believed himself to be ill he would accept healing magic from someone she suggested. And she could suggest Isaac, so long as he is at the feast. He could then feed the Sovereign some placebo while surreptitiously casting the scroll. The problem was coming up with a way to make a powerful barbarian warlord feel ill.

After discussing many different ways, Eduard put out the idea of doing a magic performance and using his bardic skill to plant a suggestion on the Black Sovereign that he felt sick. Since Kevoth-Kul expected to be entertained at all such events, it would be fairly easy to do…as long as he didn’t figure it out before the suggestion is planted. The group agreed that it was the best plan they had for success and then worked out with Kul-Inkit how they should approach the Throne Hall. She sent a guard with the message that she had acquired an entertainer for the feast and would be bringing him and his retinue along with her.

They waited in the consort’s chambers until it was time to go. In the mean time, Isaac prepared an infusion of eagle’s splendor to help Eduard in his performance. They waited until early afternoon, then followed Kul-Inkit and her guards up to the Throne Hall. The vast hall was located beneath the palace’s central dome. Great smoking torches were on the walls amid hundreds of hanging skulls, furs, weapons, and other trophies. Over a dozen wooden feasting tables filled the hall. Looming above it all from a stage was the Sovereign’s throne—a chair of black-pitted metal surrounded by even more trophies and mounds of tribute. Sitting on the throne was Kevoth-Kul, drinking from a smoking goblet. The hall was filled with barbarians celebrating the year’s end with a magnificent feast.

Kul-Inkit left the party behind and moved up to the stage to speak with the Black Sovereign and then sit at his side. Around the hall three aurmvoraxes wandered, eating scraps thrown on the floor from the gorging warriors. The party began trying to find some places to sit and join the feast. As they moved, the dull roar of feasting quieted as all eyes turn to the strange, unexpected visitors. Without bothering to rise from his throne, Kevoth-Kul yelled across the hall, requesting the party step forwards and introduce themselves, demanding to know why they thought themselves so important that they could join his feast.

Bellatrix immediately went into an over the top introduction for Eduard the Magnificent, the greatest entertainer of all the realms of the Inner Sea. Eduard bowed and swallowed his extract as though taking a bracing shot of alcohol before he began. Eduard was stellar, and soon brought the feasting Sovereign under his fascination effect with lots of glitter. Eduard had some difficulty placing the suggestion on the barbarian king, but finally got through and Kevoth-Kul began feeling very ill.

Kul-Inkit suggested that she had an alchemist who could help him. Isaac moved up on her request and handed the Black Sovereign a placebo extract. Eduard then adjusted his performance to distract Kevoth-Kul from Isaac as the android read off the heal scroll. As Isaac finished, Kevoth-Kul’s face changed expression form a dull vacancy to wide-eyed astonishment. His addiction to Numerian fluids cured, the Black Sovereign immediately realized what the Technic League had done to him—and howled with rage.

Kevoth-Kul roared in shame and rage, and he demanded the whole hall help him “slay these Technic League bastards” at once. Zernebeth walked up from near the back of the hall and pointed out that she had talked to him about possibly freeing him from his addictions when she was head of the League. She now felt that it was long past time for him to “pay a visit” to those who kept him captive. The Black Sovereign nodded in agreement and stated that the Technic League would die that night.

The feast became a war council. Kevoth-Kul would rally the Kellids of Starfall and harry the Technic League forces and destroy any Technic League robots they could find in the streets. The party, meanwhile, would go through the secret tunnel that Zernebeth mentioned into the Technic League compound and lower the defences so that the Black Sovereigns forces could get in and attack. They would keep up their harrying actions for up to twenty-four hours, before their troops would have to withdraw. The party would have that long to accomplish their goals. He also gave them permission to take whatever they found in his vaults as a reward for their actions on the way to finding the tunnel, but he warned them that servants of Zyphus from another plane were down there. They would fight the party as Kevoth-Kul did not command them.

[Feros]

Session 32 (part two):

The party rested until evening so that they would be at full strength. They travelled down to the basement and passed through what the Black Sovereign said was the lair of an athach named Brogwort the Dim. Brogwort was loyal to Kevoth-Kul and had joined him in his fight, so the lair was empty. They continued into a temple to the dread god Zyphus.

Ancient Hallite runes were chiseled into the chamber’s basalt walls. A curved stone altar sat in the northern part of the room before a circular dais, which was adorned with images of skeletons rising from graves. Two groups of four statues of a grim-looking figure in a hooded robe wielding a pick made of bones stood guard in the east and west wings. A pair of black metal doors stood to the east, while to the south a ten-foot-diameter hole in the wall opened into a larger cavern beyond. Four leukodaemons wearing vulture skulls stood guard and attacked as the party entered.

Victoria summoned a vanth which promptly attacked one of the daemons with his scythe, flanking with Bellatrix who moved in to attack as well. Aedann moved forward and attacked one of the daemons, intimidating it with his vicious slashes. One of the daemons moved in and breathed flies on the bulk of the party, with the files slashing and tearing at their flesh. The party began to move out of the fly cloud, to keep from being devoured.

Belleatrix, the vanth, and Aedann got slashed and bit by the daemons and Isuma moved out of the fly cloud and shot one of the daemons. Eduard moved out and began inspiring courage as Dugald moved out of the cloud and struck at the one that breathed on them. Bellatrix got a few successful strikes before Victoria cast gust of wind and blew the flies away. Isaac then opened fire with his sonic rifle.

Aedann struck three solid slashes into the one he was confronting and killed it. The three leukodaemons attempted to summon more of their kind but failed to bring any more help. Eduard cast grease on Dugald to avoid him being captured and his own amusement. Dugald began hammering away on the daemon next to him, killing it, as Bellatrix continued to strike vital spots, killing hers. Victoria cast disintegrate on the remaining daemon, almost destroying the creature from unhurt, but not quite able to destroy it. Isaac shot it a few times as the vanth missed while Aedann charged in and killed it with a single blow.

They searched the temple but found nothing of value and chose not to interfere with any of its structures or relics. They approached the vault and Bellatrix went to work unlocking the door while Isaac used a detect secret doors extract and searched the temple but found nothing. She got it open and found a vault plated with black metal shimmering with green energy. The vault seemed understocked, with far more empty shelves than full ones. They searched and found many amazing items, including a frostbrand and a rod of wonder.

They moved back into the temple and then headed through the hole leading to the southern cavern. A stone walkway extended over an inverted ziggurat carved into the stone floor of the cavern. The walkway was supported by stone pillars and it was twenty feet above the surrounding cave floor, while each tier of the ziggurat dropped five feet to a depth of thirty-five feet in the center, where there was a ten-foot diameter pit. Strangely colored luminescent mold grew on stalactites hanging from the ceiling thirty feet above the cave floor, while scattered throughout were the fragments of partially deconstructed Numerian automatons of all shapes and sizes.

A robot rose up and reassembled in front of them and moved to attack the group, even though it had no power cells making it work. Victoria and Huginn could see a spirit animating the machine, a gray woman wearing Kellid barbarian gear, a helm with antlers, and glowing red eyes. Victoria tried to take command of the raging spirit but was unable to do so. Isaac identified the spirit as a dybbuk, a spirit like a ghost that can possess the living and damaged objects and machines.

Bellatrix shot the machine with her sonic pistol as Aedann slashed the broken robot into pieces. Eduard cast grease on the dwarf because he just wanted to wait until it had a physical form to do something and it amused him. Dugald managed to avoid the grease and swung Valerie where Victoria told him the spirit was and he managed to damage the spirit from the power of his earth breaker’s magic.

The dybbuk animated another robot and began slamming its fists into Dugald. Victoria used her wand of lightning bolt to destroy the new frame as Isaac and Isuma shot it with their rifles. Bellatrix used her wand of lightning bolt, but did little damage to the spirit. Aedann attacked with his frostbrand but missed due to its invisibility. Eduard used his ring of the ram and managed to connect for a much more significant blow.

Dugald managed to hit and damage the dybbuk right before it animated a third robot which attacked Dugald again. Victoria continued with the lightning bolts and Issac and Isuma shooting to take down the third frame. Bellatrix called on desperate measures and used her new rod of wonder and brought an intense darkness down out to 130 feet on the cavern that blinded everyone that was going to last more than two hours.

Aedann managed to miss three more times but Dugald managed to damage the spirit with Valerie. It animated a fourth robot, but it was unable to land a blow against Dugald. Victoria cast dispel magic and got rid of the darkness. Issac and Isuma shot the animated robot with their rifles and Bellatrix shot at the robot but missed. Aedann took the fourth robot apart with his frostbrand and the dybbuk manifested, becoming visible to everyone. She proclaimed herself Amalokla, the first to hold the title of Black Sovereign. She declared that the party would not stop her from ruling Numeria again and that she would smash all the robots in existence.

Eduard struck with his ring of the ram and Dugald smashed her with Valerie, but his hammer did less than the force ram. Amalokla then tried to possess Dugald but he was able to repel her. Victoria cast disrupt undead but missed, as Issac and Isuma opened fire with their rifles, bit being not magical weaponry they failed to do anything. Bellatrix cast magic missile and managed to get the bolts into the spirit.

Aedann hit the Amalokla multiple times with his frostbrand as Eduard used his ram again and Dugald struck true, wearing the spirit down. Now Amalokla grabbed Aedann and successfully possessed the revenant. Victoria summoned a vanth to help and had it attack Aedann’s body with searing light, burning him severely. Isuma shot Aedann with her rifle and Bellatrix used her rod of wonder and she managed to cast a heal spell and it killed Aedann. The dybbuk emerged and Eduard managed to destroy it with a ring of the ram.

They buried Aedann in the cavern then waited for another eight hours for him to rise again. Issac searched the cavern as they waited and found the secret tunnel leading to the Technic League compound.