Lora swatted away little hands, scooted to as center as possible, stepped lightly over things she didn't want to know what they were, and cringed pretty regularly during the whole goblin encounter. Once the initial fear of dying by marshal hands had gone away her general preference for cleanilness made her withdraw more than normal.
"I don't like the look of that pile of cloth." she whispers to whoever is close. Whether she is talking about the disgusting stains, the weird water dancing, or general worry that anything in this place could hold something that is about to jump out and eat a person.
The base of the crane has a compartment behind a sliding door. Inside, you can find 3 pints of oil, a lesser eagle-eye elixir in the form of a pickled sparrow eye in a tiny bottle, and a lesser leaper’s elixir in the form of peppery frog leg jerky.
The crane itself still appears operable. You could use it to remove the large steel box blocking the way forward, or to lift the grate in the center of the pond to drain the water.
Looking over the oily pond, Lora spots an amorphous shape slithering across the top of the pond. The reddish-brown glob floats on the surface, waiting for prey to get near...
Lora pulls her pistol and points s it at whatever is floating hungrily in the pond. "there is something right there. Can you open that gate with that contraption to empty it?"
Eva looks over Royken's should to inspect the crane as well and as Lora informs about something on the water, she climbs over at the crane and starts to work on it. "Move aside Royken, I'm on it!"
She apparently has no trouble operating it, even if the cogs are rusty as hell.
Eva uses the crane to hook the grate under all the rags and canvas creating the clog. By displacing it, she is able to drain the rust pond, removing the obstacle. The amorphous blob Lora spotted is now visible to all, but it does not seem to be able to move very quickly out of the water.
Eva then maneuvers the crane to the large crate. A massive twenty-foot-square steel-walled cube blocks the way east. Bits of rust have pitted the bottom of the crate, causing it to have crumbled away and form large holes in the bottom; the holes are large enough to see the inside is empty. A three-foot-wide metal loop on the top of the crate allows for easier handling of the metal cube.
The crane snags the loop, and Eva hefts it and maneuvers it over the struggling ooze. She lets it fall, squishing the dangerous creature!
As you prepare to head out, you see that a pair of +1 handwraps of mighty blows are tangled on the grate! You can retrieve them without issue.
"Done and done!" Eva says as she jumps from the crane and joins the others. "Now let's move... the sooner we get out of this trash the better." She picks the handwraps as the go.
"F$!+," Royken says in appreciation of Eva's skill with the crane and her squishing of the blob. And for the handwraps that she's managed to discover.
Crystal follows. "Let's get a move on. Goodness me, I'm gonna need to scrub myself to the pain to get clean from this..."
Several benches constructed from stacked crates and sheets of metal line the southwestern corner of the area past the crate, creating a makeshift workshop. Each table is cluttered with tools, screws, machine parts, alchemical flasks, and various projects in different stages of construction. A path through the junk leads away to the north.
Crystal looks around for anything unusual on the tables.
As Crystal approaches, what look like two piles of rusted scrap suddenly rise up! These patchwork clockworks resemble hounds with crossbows for heads, and they prepare to attack!
"Well, bully for me." The white-haired gunner groans as she retreats and fires at the nearest clockwork beast!
She then starts reloading her pistol!
HP 16/22
AC 18
Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +4
Hero points: 1
Ammo: 8/10 rounds
Effects:
"F~+!!" Royken repeats once more as he realizes they're in a fight again.
He unloads a blast from his scattergun, then rushes forward to slam the nearest gearhound with the stock. The blow reverberates with a loud clang, but doesn't seem to even dent the construct.
"F!#&!!!"
Since electricity worked so well with the clockworks before, Eva decided to try again. She follows Royken, though moving around them, the sound of electricity following her as she flexes the fingers from her right hand. Once in position, Eva slams her fist on the ground, creating a ring of electricity all around her!
Her right arm then appears to spasm as electricity courses through it, and her overcoat chars a little bit in some points! As she shakes her arm, it appears to return to normal. "Damn, this still tickles..."
Unstable actions use experimental applications of your innovation that even you can't fully predict, and that are hazardous to your innovation (and potentially you). When you take an unstable action, attempt a DC 17 flat check immediately after applying its effects. On a failure, the innovation malfunctions in a spectacular (though harmless) fashion, such as a belch of smoke or shower of sparks, and it becomes incapable of being used for further unstable actions. On a critical failure, you also take an amount of
To take an unstable action, you must be using your innovation.
Some actions have an Unstable Function entry, which you can use to add the unstable trait for a bigger benefit. If you're unable to use unstable actions, you can still use the action normally, but you can't use the unstable function.
Lora nods appreciatively as Eva crushes the creepy blob. "Serves it right for peeping at us." she says to no one in particular. At the workshop she is intrigued a bit, but that Bit is lost as clockwork creatures attack them.
"They barely look held together. Smash them a little and. proddle bottle fish, they will go to pieces." she incants her bardic magic to inspire them all. This one came out of a story she read as a child, though the context is lost on her at the moment.
She also shoots the very nearest of to her own fleshy body in hopes it doesn't kill her. And then she hurries away from it.
Lora’s bullet pings off the clockwork’s chassis, and Royken’s scattergun blasts go wide. Eva unleashes an electric explosion, causing one of the constructs to seize up and collapse! The other one avoids the worst of it, but then Crystal shoots it in a vulnerable joint, and it, too, falls!
With the clockworks swiftly dispatched, a female goblin crawls out from underneath a workbench. ”Thank you, longshanks! Those things were out of control!”
The goblin, who gives her name as Monsie, tells you she repaired those two clockwork hunters and programmed them to protect her and her people from the gnolls. Lost in her enthusiasm, though, Monsie chose her words poorly when she gave the hunters their only command: kill everything. Realizing her mistake as they turned on her, she quickly hid under the bench and has been there for days!
She offers each of you any 1st-level consumable item of your choice as thanks for the rescue!
"Are you f!@@ing kidding me?" Royken says, shaking his head in disgust.
He growls a little and inspects a gouge on his arm, since it seems like they might have a few minutes.
When he's done, he snatches a small glowing crystal from the goblin's workbench and attaches it to his gun.
"The ultimate security is one with no Loopholes." Lora says with a look and an empathic tight smile. "Your electrical bombardments are highly effective against clockworks, Eva. Much more than my pistol." she looks at all the nicknacks and asks about a metallic device that seems the cleanest of the little goblin's treasures. "This feels cold, of all things, what does it do?"
"They are, right? Though that blast isn't something I should be actually doing, since it... hurts my arm." She says happy that she was indeed useful. "With some luck, we'll be able reach safety without any more fights..."
...But just in case, I'll take this Monsie. She picks an explosive mine after she makes sure it is well-crafted. "An explosive mine." She explains to the others.
Lora is taken aback, literally, since she steps away from the other woman. "It just... explodes, and you're holding it in your hand?"
Once everybody has chosen an item, Monsie thanks you again and wishes you good luck as you continue along the path!
After a short distance, you see that a once magnificent dirigible lies across the pathway through the scrapyard. The words “Harpy’s Kiss” are scrawled in faded black paint along the side. It lies in a pile of scrap metal, leaning slightly starboard, blocking the path leading east to west. On the top deck, an exposed alchemical engine juts from the planks, smoke still rising from the blasted contraption.
"It is well crafted... it will only explode after it is triggered." She explains, laughing. "Monsie knows her business... most of the time." She has to correct herself, since they had just wracked the proof of a really bad work on Monsie's part.
---
"Harpy's Kiss? Is that Phera Wyndslow's ship?" She asks, as she rushes forward to check it, for a moment forgetting they are in a hurry.
Eva rushes forward. When she gets within 10 feet of the engine, though, a loud whistle blows, the intense sound wracking the half-elf with pain! Ghostly smoke belches forth from the alchemical engine, and the screeching sound of grinding gears echoes from within as it shudders to life! The smoke resolves itself into the a humanoid form!
"Phera Wyndslow... Phera Wyndslow!" the spirit wails, seemingly overcome with emotion at the mention of the name!
The airship's engine blasts smoke in your direction!
Success: The creature takes 1d6 poison damage and is sickened 1.
Failure: The creature takes 2d6 poison damage and is sickened 2.
Critical Failure: The creature takes 3d6 poison damage and is sickened 2.
Lora start coughing, and retching, and coughing again. So much so she barely get out "por...peller...bottom" while pointing at the lonely machine spirit, all to fuel her magic.
Crystal doubles over and starts coughing when smoke gets blown in her face.
Eva wasn't expecting neither a machine ghost screaming in her face, nor the engine coming to life to burst smoke in her face. Her ears bleeding, her eyes closed and crying from the burst, and her lungs coughing, Eva shambles forward, not understanding what is going.
She bumps on the engine by accident and then, mostly to vent her frustrations, gives it a slap, as if she was trying to make it work properly. "What happened to you, girl... you were majestic..."
"Yes... I was beautiful, once!" the spirit wails. "How I long for those days when we soared..."
Taking advantage of the spirit's grief, Eva quickly tinkers with the engine and separates the spirit from the mechanical device. The spirit sighs and fades away.
The haunt is gone, but the airship is still blocking the way forward...
It takes Eva a couple minutes to recover herself from the ghost and the smoke, sadly missing the spirit fading away.
"That will teach me again the price of curiosity..." She says, referring to the fact that she rushed towards the airship without thinking twice. "...yet I think I'll never learn."
Looking at the engine, and understanding the air ship was in their way, she works on it, making it work again so they can move forward. "Perhaps one day I'll come back here and properly repair her... make her fly again."
Crystal curses herself for not paying more attention to how things were put together in her old job.
"Could make for a proud vessel, like she was before."
"F+%!, nice job," Royken says, admiring that Eva managed to get the things working while he was still taking in the scene.
"That's a right nice ship, it is," he adds, admiring what was once in fact a really nice airship.
Crystal looks down at the vial of black liquid she got from the goblin, uncorks it and pours it all over her face.
The oil sinks into her skin immediately.
In fact, most of her smoke-induced injuries heal themselves as a result.
After resting for a while to allow Lora's magic music to heal your wounds, you press on past the airship. Tattered and dust-worn canvas tents stand against the southern and western walls of scrap. A firepit sits between the tents and impaled on a crude spit over the pit is the carcass of a large, charred rat. The path through the scrap leads to the north and east.
Four twisted gnolls sit around the fire, but the get to their feet when they see you. The gnolls bear a variety of noticeable mutations—vestigial limbs, weeping pustules, misplaced sensory organs. They cackle as they begin to lope towards you!
"...well, that ain't right." Crystal responds before drawing her pistol and firing.
She then scuttles away from the gnolls, reloading her pistol when she gets away from the front line.
"Fuuuuck," Royken mutters as he sees Crystal heal. "Never seen that before. Usually you're supposed to drink that, I think."
HP 22/22
AC 18
Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +4
Hero points: 0
Ammo: 7/10 rounds; Potency crystal 1/1
Effects:
"Dragonshit!" Royken swears, and swings his gun into position, unloading a blast at the lead gnoll monstrosity.
He gets ready to slam the first gnoll to get close enough. "Come on, then, you want to do this? Let's do this!" he growls.
"Fuuuuck," Royken mutters as he sees Crystal heal. "Never seen that before. Usually you're supposed to drink that, I think."
"Take a trip south of the border sometime. This sort of thing happens all the time." Crystal shrugs in response.
As Lora heals her wounds, Eva removes her overcoat and the glove from her right hand, revealing that most of her right arm has been replaced with a metallic prosthetic. The bulk of the arm appears to be made of silver and steel, but there are protection plates of various other metals, many of them painted with various pictures, as if they were tattoos.
Eva removes a plate, revealing coils inside it that hum with electricity. With a couple tools from a pack, she starts to work on it, making adjustments. "That explosion isn't very nice to it, even if powerful..." she explains. "...and now I think you have heard about me."
"Yeah, I've been there, back in the day. What'd they get you for?" Royken asks.
The old dwarf can't help but think back to his earlier days, when his crew had been all the rage. He had moved on from them -- thanks to a little push from Chesica, that dire rat prick -- but even he couldn't deny he'd been getting older even then, skills starting to erode. His last crew had been a better group, in terms of listening, at least. Maybe they hadn't been as successful, but he'd been able to fit in there, relax a bit. Who the f!!! knew why Ambrost Mugland decided to come after them, but maybe he thought they were easy pickings. Well, he'd learn. Royken Slatehound would show him...
He shakes his head, and growls at his own thoughts.
"I have no f+*!ing idea. Some a~&!@%@ lied to me, saying I was being considered for a construction job... in the end he just wanted to get between my legs." He tells, ashamed of being tricked. "I saw Loveless and Mugland on my way out. I think they think I saw something I shouldn't."
"My luck was that they were looking at them..." She points to her breasts. "...and not at my face."
"F~!@," Royken agrees.
He pauses for a minute.
"Better news is it means they're dumb enough to get distracted. You need to keep your eye on your target. You're a beautiful woman, I'll give you that, but I don't appreciate anyone just ogling where they're not wanted."
Eva smiles, thanking the compliment. "To be fair, I was so pissed off that I run without having properly dressed myself. My metal arm was covering my nipples..." She moves her arm on the same way and it is obvious that it is a very ineffective way of covering herself. "...so I can't blame them completely."
Her arm fixed, she repositions the plates.
Lora spends the healing time reciting poetry, children books, and the occasional song about pies. Her magic has a lot to do with words as all of you have already figured out.
As she is resting her voice she listens to Eva's story, slipping her bottom onto a hunk of something to bounce her legs back and forth. "A witness who knows nothing, but just in case needs to be erased. I'm the opposite. I know plenty but that has been okay for the longest time, allowing me to sell secrets here and there, or to be paid to make sure they never see the light of day. Then one day, No longer, and I am the black sheep of society." she sighs, then grins "Well, in truth, I have been the black sheep of society for as long as society knew about me, but now it is different. Having the law chasing you is bad for business."
"Your arm is amazing, by the by." Lora compliments the inventor.
---
"Dogs, bogs, and silly little hogs all dancing in rows, one shot goes and all the pretty red shows, shows, shows." she announces to all, her courage settling on their hearts.
As she speaks, she pulls her overcoat to the side, her pistol for the holster on her hip, lines up a shot at the nearest charging gnoll, and calmly fires it in his face.
Lora’s bullet hits the first gnoll right between the eyes! He goes down hard. Crystal’s aim is off, but Royken manages to blast all three remaining gnolls. As they rush forward to attack, the dwarf swings his gun’s stock up, shattering the lead gnoll’s jaw! He falls with a whimper.
The two survivors bash the dwarf with their saps!
"Cherry pies! Oh cherry pies! The iron shot splatters cherries into the sky." Lora remembers this one from somewhere, maybe a cook singing behind the brothel as she tenderized a hunk of meat, splattering red droplets all over the alley wall. She could have imagined it all. When plastered from heck and back all sorts of things become mush in your memories.
She thinks about this, while reloading, then aims again and fires. She does love it when others draw the ire of the people wanting to kill them all. Maybe she should thank Royken for looking like someone to kill first. Hmmm, OR buy him a biscuit for breakfast if they live. Yes, that sounds like a plan.
HP 17/22
AC 18
Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +4
Hero points: 0
Ammo: 7/10 rounds; Potency crystal 1/1
Effects:
"Get off me, you sniveling gunpowder sniffers," Royken curses out the two remaining gnolls, shaking his head to clear his thoughts again.
He lashes out with his gun, laying about him in an effort to put the gnolls down quickly, slamming the stock into one of the gnolls' heads and trying to shatter its snout.
Lora and Royken quickly take down the remaining gnolls! A search of the gnolls’ tents yields 20 gp worth of jewelry and coin. Each of the gnolls carries 12 sp on their person.
Lora reloads her pistol, since being ready is always a good idea. "They were mutated heavily. But the goblins who live here are not. Do your think diet is what caused it in them or... is it this area over others." the lady muses. Even with the threat of contamination, she pockets her share of the coin without hesitation.
"Yeah, I've been there, back in the day. What'd they get you for?" Royken asks.
"Mugland claimed I was smuggling guns past the border, the delusional, greedy furnace rat." Crystal responds, her eyes darkening.
"Threatened to ruin me if I didn't cut him in. I told the uppity little creep I had no idea what he was talking about, and told him to bugger off."
"And now the marshals are after you as well?" Lora asks Crysal, then quickly adds "If it wasn't apparent, the shields have a poster up for me as well. A truly horrible likeness, both fortunately and unfortunately. Who wants people to look at a poster of YOU and snicker at how it looks."
"Yeah, that little gremlin did the same to me. And maybe I was, but I wasn't going to f%!*ing cut him in," Royken growls to Crystal. "I actually worked for my money. A good day's wage for a good dishonest day's work, and all. Living straight didn't get my parents anything. I'm not making their same damn mistakes!"
Lora listens intently, cataloging each piece of information behind her nut-brown eyes. As the conversation starts to die down, she slips off her roost, preparing to start the healing process again "At least we now know why Dame Dunsmith picked a crew that didn't know each other and had never done this kind of work before. We're all wanted already by the very people who would be hunting us for stealing their money. Loveless is the reason for my downfall if I failed to mention that before."