Imperia nods at Baird. "The best place for that- food and answers- has to be Fasturvalt. Out here all we have are questions."
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Imperia half listens for Harvald's response as she looks over the Waystone.
Imperia grimaces at the spider leg but takes one to be friendly. She bites into it with a delicacy out of odds with the bulk of her armor. "Butter could be a trade item, too. Better for a caravan, but they can't have cows down here. Milk, butter, cheese. They'd probably all do well for trade."
Imperia chuckles at the question directed at Talas. "I've often wondered that about his people, too." Her tone was amused, as she enjoyed poking fun at people. It was even funnier when someone else did it for her.
Since no one else had addressed them, Imperia flips up Legion's faceplate and smiles at the gnome who had spoken. "Of course we can give you time to rest. We would be happy to accompany you to Fasturvalt. We're planning on traveling through; if we could get some recent information or especially good maps, that would be a great help."
"You don't want to follow up on that 'outcasts' thing?" Legion shrugged its massive shoulders as Imperia indicated her own indifference. She turned and addressed the creature in Undercommon. "Go. Anything here in your lair is forfeit in return for your life. We will be moving on shortly. I'm sure we won't be taking everything. Try to remember our faces in case we come back this way. It would be a waste if we just had to kill you in the future."
Imperia nods at Baird. "She also said they're outcasts. I'd wonder what they're outcasts from. I wouldn't want to run into a whole city full of these things. But I wouldn't be averse to saying we'll spare them, talking, then finishing the job. They're clearly ambush murderers; they deserve a taste of their own."
Imperia piles on, swinging at the spider until it's paste on the floor.
I like maps for visualizing the battlefield but like Kurth said they can also be limiting. I use maps when I DM, but that's because I usually run APs where they're already there so why not. I also tend to fudge movement rules in favor of a more fluid story, but that's just me. Anyway, I'm fine either way, is what I'm saying.
Imperia stomps in on Kurth's heels, swinging one of Legion's immense metal fists at the same spider as the cleric.
Imperia quickly shuts the visor of her Legion suit with a solid clank. "I think we should begin the slaying now." She heads directly toward the red eyes, flipping a switch inset on the exterior of the armor as she does. A faint, shimmering blue field springs into being a scant inch above the dark metal.
After taking a look down the tunnel, Imperia turns to help up those who follow her up the rope.
Imperia grunts doubtfully. "I'd be happy to be first, if you think that rope will hold Legion." It's impossible to see her expression through the armor's faceplate but it's easy to hear the skeptical tone in her voice.
Imperia grunts at Baird's comment, the sound echoing oddly out of her heavy armor. "Yeah, it would be better. I'm not climbing anything steeper than stairs in this thing."
"We'll probably want to stop somewhere to get updated information- like this thing with Geirni- and resupply. How far is Kraggodan from here?"
"Lord Geirni? We'd heard Fasturvalt was led by Lord Geiri."
Imperia focuses on the tunnels around them as the others talk. She, perhaps surprisingly, does't say anything about not caring about the memories of a bunch of long-dead ancestors.
Imperia grunts at Ivy's stoic reply. "I damn well expect people to cry over me if I never come back from this trip." She shakes her head. "So let's go see if we can keep some other families from crying today."
Imperia snorts as she examines the floor. "So what was this Gunther like? You don't seem too broken up about him." After a moment, she points out the trail. "Went off that way, didn't it? We could probably track it."
Imperia sighs as none of the men introduce themselves in return. "I'm Imperia, Ivy. Glad to meet you." She does nod, though, at the question of the caravan. "Did you survive whatever happened here?"
Imperia looks over at Baird when he responds, surprised he speaks the language. She snorts and shakes her head as she looks back in the direction of the voice. "I serve myself. My family, maybe, when I'm not fighting with my mom." She gestures at the rest of her group. "For now I'm helping them look for something they lost, but I wouldn't say I serve anybody. We're, uh, not from around here. You may have noticed."
Imperia turns her head a little to whisper back over her shoulder in Common but doesn't look away from the stalagmite for fear of losing the barely-seen figure. "I heard something over by that stalagmite. It looks to me like somebody's hiding behind it, ready to run away. I don't want to spook them."
Imperia holds up her- Legion's- hands, showing she holds no weapons, and takes a few steps in the direction of the stalagmite. "Hello? Are you a survivor of whatever happened here? We won't hurt you." She speaks in Undercommon, having learned the language from her grandfather.
Imperia follows Talas's lights to inspect the other mass of mushroom-stuff.
Good luck with the interviews, Yorick. I guess it doesn't really matter. We've got the scout-types up front and Kurth and Imperia can run up and smack things if it comes to it. I'm good.
Imperial points at the collection of strange mushroom materia further down the passage. "There's more of it over there."
Imperia's technically a caster, but in her suit she's a heavy hitter. You don't want her closer to the front or back?
Staring out at the world through the tinted crystal lenses of Legion's helmet visor, Imperia's vision is particularly attuned to spotting threats. As she moves forward to stand a few yards from the others, she scans the surrounding tunnel for an ambush. "It could also be a trap." Legion holds no weapon, but the armor's powerful fists are as big and solid as a blacksmith's hammer, and Imperia raises those fists to be ready for a sudden attack.
Fine with me.
"I'll can take first. I need to finish doing maintenance on Legion, anyway."
Imperia's jaw drops at Boreyn's and Talas's comments. "That's amazing! I hadn't even thought about that, but yeah, I could see how you could do that. I mean, I don't know anything about healing, but I know a little alchemy. When we get back maybe I could talk to some healers about trying to build something like that for one of their patients." She shakes her head in awe at the ancient engineers. "That's just... wow. I can't wait to get down there and see if we can find any of their workshops."
Imperia shakes her head. "So far as I know, Legion here is one of a kind." She raps on a pauldron with her knuckle and it rings a sound familiar to any dwarf, the sound of good, solidly made steel. "I saw a blacksmith over near the river with some mule-cranked screw wells and a waterworks powering his bellows and it got me to thinking about how I might be able to use pistons to make a jackstand. I built that and figured out if I could make it smaller I might be able to make a glove that could help lift things. From there I tinkered with a gear design and worked on miniaturizing the drive cranks and shafts a bit more before I scaled up. I took a year's worth of salary in my dad's shop to the best armorer I knew of in the city- a dwarf, you'll be glad to hear- for the base suit, then designed the clockworks and pistons myself." By the end of this she is smiling proudly, like a parent talking about her children. She gives the impression that she could probably talk about her suit- Legion, she'd called it- for hours. But her ears catch up to her mouth she stops and looks at Boreyn with the same kind of intense interest a hawk might show in a rabbit. "Wait. Are you saying you've seen armor like this before? Do you think the engineers of Dammerhall might have worked on something like this?"
When Imperia showed up for the march, everyone was in for a surprise. The fact that she was wearing armor was probably expected, but the form her armor took was something new. The dwarf woman wore a suit of heavily modified plate, scaled more for a broad shouldered human than a dwarf. The metal armor alternately encased and was covered by complicated clockworks, pistons, and other machinery. In the suit she could look out the eye holes and stare Talas right in the eye. Nearly twice as tall as out of the suit, Imperia was probably more than twice as heavy. The pistons powering the arms and legs looked very strong, though during the beginning of their trek she had little opportunity to showcase that power. The machine emitted a constant ticking as the machine's clockwork heart wound down, providing power to the arms and legs. She only took off the suit at night, when she spent time winding the machine's central gear with a long crank, checking gears and other machinery, and oiling the entire works to insure smooth running. Which is what she's doing as they sit around the fire. Imperia grins at the question about her grandfather. "Oh, you want a Pick-Lock Grayblade story? Hmm, let me think." After a moment's thought she launches into a long and wildly implausible story that involves a human heiress the dwarf was forced to romance, a rival rakshasa thief trying to steal the same portrait out of the woman's bedchamber, and a chase that ended with Pick-Lock apparently getting caught in the end only to reveal that he had already disposed of the painting beforehand. She shakes her head and takes a drink after finishing the long story. "Turned out, though, that the portrait was a forgery the whole time! The joke was on both of them." Imperia sighs and smiles, clearly happy to talk about her infamous grandfather.
Imperia looks with interest at the relic of old dwarven craft. She nods at Boreyn. "And I'm sure it will take care of us in return. A compass forged underground hopefully won't be fooled by the strange energies we'll run into down there."
Imperia nods at Talas and fishes a pair of gold coins out of her coin purse to add to the pile. She shrugs. "Clockmaking pays quite well, especially when you're the best in the city." "I know where mother buys her groceries. Maybe we can get a deal out of him with a longtime customer discount."
Imperia shakes her head at the mention of mules. "If we're planning on rope and climbing gear I wouldn't waste money on mules. Seems like an either-or kind of choice there, and I think it's more likely we'll need the climbing gear."
Imperia nods at Boreyn. "I know we've got a coil of rope at home. If that's not enough I know a place to buy some."
Imperia shrugs. "From up here they all sound like equally bad options. We might want to talk about re-planning once we're on the ground down there." She shakes her head at Kurth's question. "I just need time to pack. I should be good for supplies from what I've got at home."
Imperia grimaces. "Does your map take us through a drow camp?" She leans over to look at the map. "I wouldn't count on us surprising any dark elves in their own territory. Best hope we avoid them altogether."
Imperia doesn't look the least bit convinced by Drogic's appeal to higher principles, but she does seem interested in learning sign language. She nods at Baird. "All of us learning at least a few signs would be useful. We could even use them between ourselves, in the dark."
Imperia sighs and shakes her head. "This is going to work great."
Imperia shrugs. "If I was raised in Dammerhall, I could see your point. But I wasn't. My parents weren't even raised there. They were Chelish, now Nirmathi. I understand what you're saying, but Skelt isn't the tunnels and forges of a dwarven city. It's an open city with people of every race. Here you're whatever you make of yourself. You don't have to act or be a certain way. We could've just as easily ended up Druman bankers if grandpa had gone east instead of north." She shakes her head and sighs. "I understand what you're saying. But it's not how I was raised. If you want to attribute me being good with machines to me being a dwarf, fine, but I say it's because dad's the best damn clockmaker in Skelt and I learned at his knee. Does it matter? I want to see the forges and drawing rooms of the ancient engineers. Who care where my interest comes from?"
Imperia makes a face and snorts. "That's ridiculous. You're saying that a person's relatives are more important than the culture in which they were raised. I have more in common with my neighbors than I do with Mister Steelhymn here." She glances over at Boreyn and says "No offense." Looking back at Talas, she shakes her head. "Humans tend to forthrightness as well, at least those raised in cultures that esteem that trait. Personal pride, as well. You might as well say that dwarves tend to be overly critical of themselves or that elves prefer variety and change and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictive rules or arbitrary limitations." "Those are vague, generally positive generalizations that anybody would tend to accept about themselves. That's the kind of thing con artists use to trick people into believing them." The young dwarf shakes her head. "It might be a new concept to you, but I want to be judged on my own merits, not because you knew some people who looked like me 200 years ago." She gives Talas a small smile. "And I don't know about elf girls, but if you call this dwarf girl a rock again, she's going to find a ladder and punch you in the nose."
Imperia gives Talas a small frown. "Daughter of Arodus Grayblade, master clockmaker, thank you. I'm not big on the 'my people' thing. You can judge me on how good a trap-springer I am, not on my height. Alright?" She looks over at Baird and gives him a nod as she sits down. "Good meeting you."
Welcome to the game.
"Not at all like a prayer, I'm a story-singer. I was trained to sing with my brothers in the Stone halls of Dammerhall, songs about our history, about our achievements. Since my parents died a long time ago, I was dubbed Steelhymn as I was the last of these story-singers and that name stuck ever since. I think most would call me a scholar, historian or a bard, perhaps I'm all three come to think of it." Boreyn tells Imperia and Kurth as they go their way towards the inn. Imperia nods. "How about that." It's hard to miss the lack of actual interest in her voice.
The young dwarven girl smiles at Boreyn. "Imperia Wardroxan-Grayblade, at your service. Best clockwork maker in the city, after my dad."
Imperia nods. "Grandpa's told me about Drogic, yeah. I've never, uh, had the pleasure."
"Steelhymn? Like a prayer? Are you a priest or something?" She nods at the old dwarf. "Let's go check with the innkeeper to see if anybody's come looking for you."
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