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Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8068070" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p><span style="font-size: 15px">Session 6: The Passage to Madness</span></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)</p><p>Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk (Way of the Sun Soul)</p><p>Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)</p><p>Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter (Champion)</p><p></p><p>Absent but traveling along:</p><p></p><p>Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest))</p><p>Elama “Lamie” Galanodel - Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)</p><p></p><p>GM - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p>Note: Elama's and Mia's players were unable to attend, but they stayed with us, riding in the carts and resting while we traveled.</p><p></p><p></p><p>12 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 13) (immediately after)</p><p></p><p>We looked around after the last of the cultists fell to see the stunned civilians beginning to rouse from the daze they’d been under looking varying degrees of freaked out by the experience. Elderron called them away from the Machine, so that no one could wind out going into the machine. They were still a bit under the influence of the Speaker for the Machine and therefore easily led and they went where Elderron told them to go.</p><p></p><p>We got people 60’ away from the Machine, hoping that would be a safe distance for all of us to be away from its mental effects.</p><p></p><p>The civilians remembered themselves and remembered something of what happened while they were there. While the Speaker was talking he made sense to them and seemed to be leading up to <em>something</em>, but they couldn’t now reconstruct the sense and they didn’t know what he had been leading up to. They went back to their wagons and their original traveling companions. They reported that there were some people missing, but only a few.</p><p></p><p>The Speaker and the cultists had been gathering people there in the road for a couple of days -- so some of the civilians had been standing there brain-snarfed, without eating and without resting for over 48 hours. They were exhausted and sore. They told us that some people had gone into the machine more than once and came out different every time -- whether with physical or other changes. The people who went in while they were gathered to listen were individually invited by the Speaker, one at a time and personally.</p><p></p><p>While the merchants were seeing to their horses, who’d been standing in their traces for two days as well, we took a look around at the wagon the Machine was on. We saw a couple of corpses on the wagon -- with gaping holes in their chests, so it seemed that at least a couple of the grues (beachballs) had come from these guys.</p><p></p><p>The traders who’d encountered the Machine wagon first reported that it was heading <em>toward</em> Tash when they encountered it. The last traders we’d encountered on the road (early the day before) had said they encountered no one heading toward Tash at all until us. So those traders must have dodged a bullet.</p><p></p><p>Also, the Machine and its cultist entourage must have entered the main road to Tash somewhere between where we encountered that wagon (just outside of Tormul, the village with the spider problem) and this spot. We’d noticed some side tracks along the way, but not paid much attention to them as we were focused on the road to Tash.</p><p></p><p>We talked to a couple of the traders and told them that there was a town a couple of days back they could stay in. All of them, including those who’d been on the way to Tash (and for whom it was two days away from their destination) agreed that they’d head to Tormul in the morning. It was clear that they planned to travel together as a group for safety’s sake.</p><p></p><p>We asked about our cart, which we got from the cultists we initially encountered in Tashimeet, to see if there were any clues or indications on it to point to which trading house it had been associated with. They agreed that it looked like it was from Tash. We were told that it looked pretty new -- though they couldn’t tell if it was new equipment for an established trading house or starting equipment for a new house. They did say that it looked to be in good shape.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: Is there a new trading company?</p><p>Traders: There are always companies starting up and fading out.</p><p></p><p>As the merchants pulled their wagons away from the Machine, ultimately settling in a cluster about 150 feet away, it became clear that a second wagon was left abandoned, next to the Machine wagon. None of them claimed it and it apparently belonged to the Speaker and his entourage. So we took a look at it (the Epiphany Machine took up all of its wagon and there was no room for anything else in it).</p><p></p><p>In the wagon we found a bunch of stuff. Some of it was laid claim to by the other wagoneers and traders. We let them take their own stuff back. When they had done so, we looked through what was left.</p><p></p><p>We found many things. The magical items Elderron picked out for us were:</p><p></p><p>Potions of: Healing, Greater Healing, Climbing and Stone Giant Strength</p><p>Staff of Bird Calls (This seemed like a Mia thing.)</p><p>A backpack (which turned out to be a Heward’s Handy Haversack)</p><p>A Moontouched longsword (its only magical property is that it glows) (Elama)</p><p>Scroll of See Invisibility</p><p></p><p>Elderron was also interested in a book which had several pages torn out of it, and other pages had text scrawled over the already written pages. It turned out to be a spell book. Elderron sat down to look at what he’d found.</p><p></p><p>With Elderron now distracted, the rest of us dumped out the handy haversack and found:</p><p></p><p>4 silver trade bars (worth 2500 sp each)</p><p>110 platinum pieces (!!)</p><p>1700 gold pieces</p><p>400 copper pieces</p><p></p><p>We also found seven art items, each worth 25 gp, to wit:</p><p>Two bone statuettes, a matched set of Elven nudes, one male and one female (art, not erotica)</p><p>Small gold bracelet</p><p>Embroidered silk handkerchief</p><p>Set of bone dice</p><p>Gold locket with a portrait of a gnome child</p><p>Cloth-of-gold vestments</p><p></p><p>(Vinya would like the two statuettes and will put 25 of her own gold into the pot to buy one from the party, and take the other as her share of the division of treasure.)</p><p></p><p>(The coinage and art (excluding the trade bars) divide to 18 pp, 1 art object, 283 gp, and 66 cp each. The trade bars will have to wait for a city. This division left over 2 pp, 3 gp, and 4 cp for the party kitty.)</p><p></p><p>We decided to make camp about 120’ from the Machine wagon, but didn’t want to leave the Machine unattended all night, so we divided up our forces somewhat. Vinya started the night staying with Machine while Elama and Marxine kept watch at the main camp.</p><p></p><p>Vinya took a look at the machine by torch and lantern light while she was keeping watch. It didn’t look like much -- it looked like a pile of metal bits and rubble, dirty and old -- old steel piled up into a sort of a tunnel. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a moving part or machine, just a pile of rubble that she could sort of see through.</p><p></p><p>Elderron replaced her on watch at the Machine and she pointed out her observations about the Machine. He noticed that some of the spaces and gaps in the machine met up in ways to make the broken circles in the cultists’ holy symbol. He also spotted some geared pieces in the Machine, but the gears didn’t engage with any other gears, so it wasn’t clear that they were usefully moving pieces.</p><p></p><p>After Vinya left for her rest, Elderron looked over the Machine for any runes or writing, but didn’t find any. Not even any gibberish.</p><p></p><p>On third watch, Aldalómiel took over at the Machine. Her examination noticed three shiny, silvery strips of metal integrated into the chaotic structure.</p><p></p><p>Aside from our explorations, the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>13 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 14)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, we prepared to leave with the traders. The harness on our cart had been damaged by Marxine during the course of the battle with the Speaker and we got some assistance from one of the wagonmasters in repairing it. We decided, over a bit of objection from Marxine, to keep our cart and let the traders take the cultists’ cart. (The argument for keeping our cart was that if we wanted to find out more information and possibly identify the original owners of our cart, we needed to have it still. The argument against was that we’d gotten probably as much information on that score as we were going to from the traders and having a new cart would be nice.)</p><p></p><p>Elderron wanted a horse to ride, so we kept two horses for the Machine cart, our two horses (Comrade and White Horse) and one of the horses from the cultists’ wagon. The other horse from the cultists’ wagon was given to the merchants to go with the extra wagon.</p><p></p><p>We weren’t totally decided what to do with the Machine. Some of us wanted to destroy it, others were more ambivalent about that, but none of us were sure about how to go about it safely or where we should make the attempt. We decided to take it with us, because we obviously couldn’t leave it here as a trap for people to stumble over.</p><p></p><p>We headed out toward Tormul, watching for side tracks. Mia drove our cart and Marxine the Machine wagon. We closed up the cover on the Machine wagon, so the Machine wasn’t at all visible, just the canvas cover on the wagon. The merchants all stayed behind us, so they wouldn’t mess up any tracks that we might possibly find useful, though with the rain the day before, we weren’t sure how much useful we’d find.</p><p></p><p>Early in the day, we ran into a trade wagon coming from the Knot. We greeted them and asked if they’d encountered anything weird along the road. They said they’d encountered some really large cat tracks, like tiger or jaguar sized, back on the other side of Tormul (most of two days away).</p><p></p><p>Marxine: How’s the Knot doing?</p><p>Traders: We heard about a kerfuffle -- there were some crazy people at Tashimeet who had a catching form of craziness who were killed before they hurt anyone.</p><p></p><p>Well, that sounded familiar. So we thanked them and let them continue on their way. Elderron sent Oda up looking for big cats and side tracks.</p><p></p><p>In the afternoon, we found the side track we’d been looking for, heading to the right into the woods. Aldalómiel and Marxine both thought they could see some evidence of cart traffic on the road, but it was kind of vague because their best guess it predated the rain we’d travelled through.</p><p></p><p>We parted ways with the merchants and headed up this side track. The side track was cart navigable, but we wanted to have everyone together, so we hitched the Machine wagon to the back of our wagon and had four horses pulling (with Elderron riding his horse alongside).</p><p></p><p>Right around dusk, as we were travelling up the side road and starting to look for a place to make camp, we heard a lot of loud and unpleasant noises -- a gust of air and much grinding of metal-on-metal and metal-on-wood -- from the Machine. We looked back and saw that the canvas cover on the cart had stuff poking into it at odd angles.</p><p></p><p>Marxine groaned in pain (she and Aldalómiel had failed a save against a bit of influence from the Machine earlier and Marxine failed another save and took some damage as that bit of influence was wrenched from her).</p><p></p><p>We looked under the cover and into the wagon and found that the Machine had collapsed in on itself. Elderron cast detect magic and found that the Machine was no longer magical -- all he could detect was a fading magical residue.</p><p></p><p>We realized that it had been 24 hours since we’d fought the Speaker for the Machine and the cultists -- so perhaps that amount of time without the Speaker, or without having a person fed through it, caused it to collapse.</p><p></p><p>We poked at it with poles and sticks. Aldalómiel noticed that some coils of wire were rusting and corroding as we watched. We could also see patches of rust and corrosion on the larger pieces of metal spreading and expanding under our eyes as well. As we contemplated that, Aldalómiel also noticed that the three silvery strips of metal she’d spotted were gone -- just disappeared.</p><p></p><p>Elderron remembered that he’d heard of some powerful items that are hard to destroy because they go away before anyone can do that. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t.</p><p></p><p>Great.</p><p></p><p>Vinya used a piece of chalk to mark the extent of one of the rust patches, so we could keep an eye on how fast it was growing.</p><p></p><p>We made camp, since it was sunset when the Machine collapsed.</p><p></p><p>We tied the horses to the carts and made a fire about 15 feet away. During first watch, we saw the fire reflecting in the eyes of a large cat, something like a jaguar. The jaguar circled around the camp and the fire toward the horses. Lamie went to wake up Aldalómiel and Elderron while Vinya moved to the horses nearest the cat, untying them so they weren’t sitting ducks for the jaguar to attack, then she got between them and the jaguar.</p><p></p><p>(Note: Mia was deemed to be feeling poorly and allowed to sleep instead of taking a watch. Elama was there, but stayed out of combat -- she was available for healing if needed and we decided she could do things like waking people up.)</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel stood up and used her sling to hit the jaguar in the flank with a solid shot. The jaguar then proceeded past the party, circling around the horses and out into the woods. Elderron got up and moved in the direction the cat had gone and waited, holding a spell, until it came back.</p><p></p><p>Vinya yelled for Elama to hold the horses, then moved around the camp to where she could see the jaguar again, keeping an eye on it. Aldalómiel moved to the edge of the camp and waited with her sling until she was confident that it had gone away.</p><p></p><p>We moved the horses closer to the fire and the camp, so they wouldn’t be so vulnerable if the jaguar came back. The rest of the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>14 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 15)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, we took a look at the Machine. The wire had completely degraded away, leaving nothing but a haze of rust powder where it had been. The rust patches we’d marked the evening before had grown in extent and were deeper -- with rust flaking off the surface. The bronze pieces in the Machine had turned green with bronze disease. It looked like normal metal aging, but very accelerated. We figured there were maybe a few days before it was entirely gone.</p><p></p><p>We continued on the track with the remains of the Machine in its wagon hitched to the back of our wagon.</p><p></p><p>Before noon, we spotted some humans dressed like woodsmen or loggers crossing the road. They jumped and yelped in startlement when they saw up.</p><p></p><p>Loggers: We weren’t expecting to see anyone.</p><p>Us: Sorry. Has anything weird been going on?</p><p>Loggers: A few days ago we heard someone screaming...screaming and sort of gibbering on this same road. That wasn’t you?</p><p></p><p>We assured them that it wasn’t.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: What’s up the road?</p><p>Loggers: Just woods.</p><p>Marxine: Where are you coming from?</p><p>Loggers: There’s a logging camp that way (they pointed behind them). We’re heading toward another camp in the woods over that way (pointing into the woods on the other side of the road in front of them).</p><p>Marxine: This road goes somewhere.</p><p>Loggers: Well, there’s a big logging camp up the road -- there’s a sawmill that cuts the logs into boards. They put some logs and the boards on to carts to take a back road to Tash. It’s a bit of a shortcut from here and they can stay off the bandits on the main road.</p><p></p><p>We thanked them and wished them well and continued on our way.</p><p></p><p>Shortly before nightfall, we came up on an old stockade which surrounded an old logging camp. The wall looked to be in good shape, but the gate was open and the camp was completely abandoned. The buildings looked as though logs and lumber had been pulled down and used for something else.</p><p></p><p>That something else appeared to have been something in the middle of the camp. There we found a pile of rotted wood -- really moldy, rotted, and soft to the touch. Looking around we saw that the stockade, the parts of the buildings that were not torn down, and the wooden furniture all appeared to be normal -- they weren’t showing much sign of aging or wear. But the wood in the middle of the camp, approximately the same age, was rotted and nearly turned into compost.</p><p></p><p>The stockade showed no sign of there having been a fight or struggle around it, but some signs of that would have been lost in the rain and might have been missed.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, despite the chaotic nature of the Machine (which appeared to have been made of wood in this camp) the buildings appeared to have been un-built or disassembled quite methodically from the top down.</p><p></p><p>Elderron looked around the village for a smithy or a forge. When he found it, he noticed that all of the metal he’d expect to be associated with a forge was still there. He also could see that someone had done something with a lot of metal. It was as though someone had brought in a lot of metal -- it wasn’t smelted or forged here, but they were breaking down metal into smaller pieces, pulling wire, that sort of thing.</p><p></p><p>It looked like the metal Machine we’d encountered was perhaps at least partially built here, replacing the wooden one in the center of the camp.</p><p></p><p>There was no sign of anyone alive in the camp.</p><p></p><p>The road didn’t continue on past this point…</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Well, crap, y’all.</p><p></p><p>We observed that we have a chicken and egg problem -- crazy people make the Machine to make crazy people.</p><p></p><p>Elderron: Maybe the warlock (the Speaker) made a pact with the Hunger Between Worlds to learn how to make the machine. Making more cultists.</p><p></p><p>Elderron also noticed that there was no saw here -- not even a place for one. Maybe they had a portable one? We checked in the remains of the metal Machine and didn’t see any sign of anything like a saw blade.</p><p></p><p>We tried throwing some pieces of wood onto the composting wood pile and it didn’t change -- it just continued to be wood. Bringing the remains of the metal Machine near to the remains of what we believed to be a wooden Machine didn’t do anything, so we made camp inside the stockade, since it would be a defensible and safe position.</p><p></p><p>We realized that this could be a cultist camp.</p><p></p><p>We kept watches during the night, even though we were in the safety of the stockade. We heard at various times of the night the yowling of the jaguar hunting in the woods around us.</p><p></p><p>On second watch, Elama, Elderron and Aldalómiel heard what sounded like shrieking or laughter off at a great distance in the direction we’d been going.</p><p></p><p>Elderron: That’s highly unusual.</p><p></p><p>He woke everyone else up and we all listened, poised for anything to happen. Fifteen minutes later, the shrieking laughter stopped.</p><p></p><p>Elderron sent Oda out to take a look, but he didn’t see anything close to the camp.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: The cat could have made a new meal.</p><p></p><p>We agreed that was a definite possibility.</p><p></p><p></p><p>15 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 16)</p><p></p><p>The next morning dawned cold, clear and wintry.</p><p></p><p>Looking at the road outside the logging camp, we saw signs of something large and heavy having been dragged along the ground in the direction we’d been heading. That was the same direction we’d heard the shrieking laughter from.</p><p></p><p>We headed out, going that way, following the drag-mark tracks. We presumed these were the sign of the heavy load of metal having been dragged to the camp from somewhere.</p><p></p><p>Shortly after lunch, we started getting into some more mountainous terrain.</p><p></p><p>We came upon a narrow valley with something that looked a bit like a Greek ampitheater, sized for giants, with the seats in an arc carved out of the mountain on one side and the stage against the mountain on the other side. We entered at the top of the seats.. From a distance, we could see something in a square (or polygonal/angular structure). As we got closer we could tell that it was an 11-ringed gimballed circle, like a huge version of the cultists’ holy symbol. Inside the innermost circle was a desiccated corpse. (The metal holy symbol is 11 rings joined to gimbal and spin in different directions. That was mounted so that it could spin on yet another axis inside the metal polyhedron on the stage. The corpse was inside the symbol.)</p><p></p><p>Marxine looked at the corpse -- from the distance we were at (about 150’) she could see no sign of it being rotten, but we were still a ways off.</p><p></p><p>Vinya looked around for any structures other than the ampitheater built into the sides of two mountains -- huts for actors to be in, a building with a green room or any of the other infrastructure specifically associated with a theater, a village for people who attend the theater in this place. That sort of thing. There was nothing in the vicinity.</p><p></p><p>Elderron cast detect magic and walked toward the amphitheater, accompanied by Vinya and Marxine (in case this was an ambush of some sort).</p><p></p><p>When the party were about 120’ from the stage, the rings began to spin, each on its own axis, until the corpse was facing us, its head lolling. Then its eyes opened and it began to shudder and twitch, yanking itself against the rusty spikes holding its hands and feet to the rings. Shrieking laughter rang forth in many voices and many timbres, while the body in the rings stared fixedly at the party.</p><p></p><p>Beyond, a section of the cliff wall and floor slid down and away with a deep grinding and small showers of rock dust, opening a passage into the darkness.</p><p></p><p>We ended there, with the darkness beckoning in front of us.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8068070, member: 7016699"] [SIZE=4]Session 6: The Passage to Madness[/SIZE] Dramatis Personae: Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave) Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk (Way of the Sun Soul) Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster) Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter (Champion) Absent but traveling along: Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest)) Elama “Lamie” Galanodel - Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest) GM - Everyone Else Note: Elama's and Mia's players were unable to attend, but they stayed with us, riding in the carts and resting while we traveled. 12 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 13) (immediately after) We looked around after the last of the cultists fell to see the stunned civilians beginning to rouse from the daze they’d been under looking varying degrees of freaked out by the experience. Elderron called them away from the Machine, so that no one could wind out going into the machine. They were still a bit under the influence of the Speaker for the Machine and therefore easily led and they went where Elderron told them to go. We got people 60’ away from the Machine, hoping that would be a safe distance for all of us to be away from its mental effects. The civilians remembered themselves and remembered something of what happened while they were there. While the Speaker was talking he made sense to them and seemed to be leading up to [I]something[/I], but they couldn’t now reconstruct the sense and they didn’t know what he had been leading up to. They went back to their wagons and their original traveling companions. They reported that there were some people missing, but only a few. The Speaker and the cultists had been gathering people there in the road for a couple of days -- so some of the civilians had been standing there brain-snarfed, without eating and without resting for over 48 hours. They were exhausted and sore. They told us that some people had gone into the machine more than once and came out different every time -- whether with physical or other changes. The people who went in while they were gathered to listen were individually invited by the Speaker, one at a time and personally. While the merchants were seeing to their horses, who’d been standing in their traces for two days as well, we took a look around at the wagon the Machine was on. We saw a couple of corpses on the wagon -- with gaping holes in their chests, so it seemed that at least a couple of the grues (beachballs) had come from these guys. The traders who’d encountered the Machine wagon first reported that it was heading [I]toward[/I] Tash when they encountered it. The last traders we’d encountered on the road (early the day before) had said they encountered no one heading toward Tash at all until us. So those traders must have dodged a bullet. Also, the Machine and its cultist entourage must have entered the main road to Tash somewhere between where we encountered that wagon (just outside of Tormul, the village with the spider problem) and this spot. We’d noticed some side tracks along the way, but not paid much attention to them as we were focused on the road to Tash. We talked to a couple of the traders and told them that there was a town a couple of days back they could stay in. All of them, including those who’d been on the way to Tash (and for whom it was two days away from their destination) agreed that they’d head to Tormul in the morning. It was clear that they planned to travel together as a group for safety’s sake. We asked about our cart, which we got from the cultists we initially encountered in Tashimeet, to see if there were any clues or indications on it to point to which trading house it had been associated with. They agreed that it looked like it was from Tash. We were told that it looked pretty new -- though they couldn’t tell if it was new equipment for an established trading house or starting equipment for a new house. They did say that it looked to be in good shape. Marxine: Is there a new trading company? Traders: There are always companies starting up and fading out. As the merchants pulled their wagons away from the Machine, ultimately settling in a cluster about 150 feet away, it became clear that a second wagon was left abandoned, next to the Machine wagon. None of them claimed it and it apparently belonged to the Speaker and his entourage. So we took a look at it (the Epiphany Machine took up all of its wagon and there was no room for anything else in it). In the wagon we found a bunch of stuff. Some of it was laid claim to by the other wagoneers and traders. We let them take their own stuff back. When they had done so, we looked through what was left. We found many things. The magical items Elderron picked out for us were: Potions of: Healing, Greater Healing, Climbing and Stone Giant Strength Staff of Bird Calls (This seemed like a Mia thing.) A backpack (which turned out to be a Heward’s Handy Haversack) A Moontouched longsword (its only magical property is that it glows) (Elama) Scroll of See Invisibility Elderron was also interested in a book which had several pages torn out of it, and other pages had text scrawled over the already written pages. It turned out to be a spell book. Elderron sat down to look at what he’d found. With Elderron now distracted, the rest of us dumped out the handy haversack and found: 4 silver trade bars (worth 2500 sp each) 110 platinum pieces (!!) 1700 gold pieces 400 copper pieces We also found seven art items, each worth 25 gp, to wit: Two bone statuettes, a matched set of Elven nudes, one male and one female (art, not erotica) Small gold bracelet Embroidered silk handkerchief Set of bone dice Gold locket with a portrait of a gnome child Cloth-of-gold vestments (Vinya would like the two statuettes and will put 25 of her own gold into the pot to buy one from the party, and take the other as her share of the division of treasure.) (The coinage and art (excluding the trade bars) divide to 18 pp, 1 art object, 283 gp, and 66 cp each. The trade bars will have to wait for a city. This division left over 2 pp, 3 gp, and 4 cp for the party kitty.) We decided to make camp about 120’ from the Machine wagon, but didn’t want to leave the Machine unattended all night, so we divided up our forces somewhat. Vinya started the night staying with Machine while Elama and Marxine kept watch at the main camp. Vinya took a look at the machine by torch and lantern light while she was keeping watch. It didn’t look like much -- it looked like a pile of metal bits and rubble, dirty and old -- old steel piled up into a sort of a tunnel. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a moving part or machine, just a pile of rubble that she could sort of see through. Elderron replaced her on watch at the Machine and she pointed out her observations about the Machine. He noticed that some of the spaces and gaps in the machine met up in ways to make the broken circles in the cultists’ holy symbol. He also spotted some geared pieces in the Machine, but the gears didn’t engage with any other gears, so it wasn’t clear that they were usefully moving pieces. After Vinya left for her rest, Elderron looked over the Machine for any runes or writing, but didn’t find any. Not even any gibberish. On third watch, Aldalómiel took over at the Machine. Her examination noticed three shiny, silvery strips of metal integrated into the chaotic structure. Aside from our explorations, the night passed without incident. 13 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 14) The next morning, we prepared to leave with the traders. The harness on our cart had been damaged by Marxine during the course of the battle with the Speaker and we got some assistance from one of the wagonmasters in repairing it. We decided, over a bit of objection from Marxine, to keep our cart and let the traders take the cultists’ cart. (The argument for keeping our cart was that if we wanted to find out more information and possibly identify the original owners of our cart, we needed to have it still. The argument against was that we’d gotten probably as much information on that score as we were going to from the traders and having a new cart would be nice.) Elderron wanted a horse to ride, so we kept two horses for the Machine cart, our two horses (Comrade and White Horse) and one of the horses from the cultists’ wagon. The other horse from the cultists’ wagon was given to the merchants to go with the extra wagon. We weren’t totally decided what to do with the Machine. Some of us wanted to destroy it, others were more ambivalent about that, but none of us were sure about how to go about it safely or where we should make the attempt. We decided to take it with us, because we obviously couldn’t leave it here as a trap for people to stumble over. We headed out toward Tormul, watching for side tracks. Mia drove our cart and Marxine the Machine wagon. We closed up the cover on the Machine wagon, so the Machine wasn’t at all visible, just the canvas cover on the wagon. The merchants all stayed behind us, so they wouldn’t mess up any tracks that we might possibly find useful, though with the rain the day before, we weren’t sure how much useful we’d find. Early in the day, we ran into a trade wagon coming from the Knot. We greeted them and asked if they’d encountered anything weird along the road. They said they’d encountered some really large cat tracks, like tiger or jaguar sized, back on the other side of Tormul (most of two days away). Marxine: How’s the Knot doing? Traders: We heard about a kerfuffle -- there were some crazy people at Tashimeet who had a catching form of craziness who were killed before they hurt anyone. Well, that sounded familiar. So we thanked them and let them continue on their way. Elderron sent Oda up looking for big cats and side tracks. In the afternoon, we found the side track we’d been looking for, heading to the right into the woods. Aldalómiel and Marxine both thought they could see some evidence of cart traffic on the road, but it was kind of vague because their best guess it predated the rain we’d travelled through. We parted ways with the merchants and headed up this side track. The side track was cart navigable, but we wanted to have everyone together, so we hitched the Machine wagon to the back of our wagon and had four horses pulling (with Elderron riding his horse alongside). Right around dusk, as we were travelling up the side road and starting to look for a place to make camp, we heard a lot of loud and unpleasant noises -- a gust of air and much grinding of metal-on-metal and metal-on-wood -- from the Machine. We looked back and saw that the canvas cover on the cart had stuff poking into it at odd angles. Marxine groaned in pain (she and Aldalómiel had failed a save against a bit of influence from the Machine earlier and Marxine failed another save and took some damage as that bit of influence was wrenched from her). We looked under the cover and into the wagon and found that the Machine had collapsed in on itself. Elderron cast detect magic and found that the Machine was no longer magical -- all he could detect was a fading magical residue. We realized that it had been 24 hours since we’d fought the Speaker for the Machine and the cultists -- so perhaps that amount of time without the Speaker, or without having a person fed through it, caused it to collapse. We poked at it with poles and sticks. Aldalómiel noticed that some coils of wire were rusting and corroding as we watched. We could also see patches of rust and corrosion on the larger pieces of metal spreading and expanding under our eyes as well. As we contemplated that, Aldalómiel also noticed that the three silvery strips of metal she’d spotted were gone -- just disappeared. Elderron remembered that he’d heard of some powerful items that are hard to destroy because they go away before anyone can do that. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t. Great. Vinya used a piece of chalk to mark the extent of one of the rust patches, so we could keep an eye on how fast it was growing. We made camp, since it was sunset when the Machine collapsed. We tied the horses to the carts and made a fire about 15 feet away. During first watch, we saw the fire reflecting in the eyes of a large cat, something like a jaguar. The jaguar circled around the camp and the fire toward the horses. Lamie went to wake up Aldalómiel and Elderron while Vinya moved to the horses nearest the cat, untying them so they weren’t sitting ducks for the jaguar to attack, then she got between them and the jaguar. (Note: Mia was deemed to be feeling poorly and allowed to sleep instead of taking a watch. Elama was there, but stayed out of combat -- she was available for healing if needed and we decided she could do things like waking people up.) Aldalómiel stood up and used her sling to hit the jaguar in the flank with a solid shot. The jaguar then proceeded past the party, circling around the horses and out into the woods. Elderron got up and moved in the direction the cat had gone and waited, holding a spell, until it came back. Vinya yelled for Elama to hold the horses, then moved around the camp to where she could see the jaguar again, keeping an eye on it. Aldalómiel moved to the edge of the camp and waited with her sling until she was confident that it had gone away. We moved the horses closer to the fire and the camp, so they wouldn’t be so vulnerable if the jaguar came back. The rest of the night passed without incident. 14 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 15) The next morning, we took a look at the Machine. The wire had completely degraded away, leaving nothing but a haze of rust powder where it had been. The rust patches we’d marked the evening before had grown in extent and were deeper -- with rust flaking off the surface. The bronze pieces in the Machine had turned green with bronze disease. It looked like normal metal aging, but very accelerated. We figured there were maybe a few days before it was entirely gone. We continued on the track with the remains of the Machine in its wagon hitched to the back of our wagon. Before noon, we spotted some humans dressed like woodsmen or loggers crossing the road. They jumped and yelped in startlement when they saw up. Loggers: We weren’t expecting to see anyone. Us: Sorry. Has anything weird been going on? Loggers: A few days ago we heard someone screaming...screaming and sort of gibbering on this same road. That wasn’t you? We assured them that it wasn’t. Marxine: What’s up the road? Loggers: Just woods. Marxine: Where are you coming from? Loggers: There’s a logging camp that way (they pointed behind them). We’re heading toward another camp in the woods over that way (pointing into the woods on the other side of the road in front of them). Marxine: This road goes somewhere. Loggers: Well, there’s a big logging camp up the road -- there’s a sawmill that cuts the logs into boards. They put some logs and the boards on to carts to take a back road to Tash. It’s a bit of a shortcut from here and they can stay off the bandits on the main road. We thanked them and wished them well and continued on our way. Shortly before nightfall, we came up on an old stockade which surrounded an old logging camp. The wall looked to be in good shape, but the gate was open and the camp was completely abandoned. The buildings looked as though logs and lumber had been pulled down and used for something else. That something else appeared to have been something in the middle of the camp. There we found a pile of rotted wood -- really moldy, rotted, and soft to the touch. Looking around we saw that the stockade, the parts of the buildings that were not torn down, and the wooden furniture all appeared to be normal -- they weren’t showing much sign of aging or wear. But the wood in the middle of the camp, approximately the same age, was rotted and nearly turned into compost. The stockade showed no sign of there having been a fight or struggle around it, but some signs of that would have been lost in the rain and might have been missed. Interestingly, despite the chaotic nature of the Machine (which appeared to have been made of wood in this camp) the buildings appeared to have been un-built or disassembled quite methodically from the top down. Elderron looked around the village for a smithy or a forge. When he found it, he noticed that all of the metal he’d expect to be associated with a forge was still there. He also could see that someone had done something with a lot of metal. It was as though someone had brought in a lot of metal -- it wasn’t smelted or forged here, but they were breaking down metal into smaller pieces, pulling wire, that sort of thing. It looked like the metal Machine we’d encountered was perhaps at least partially built here, replacing the wooden one in the center of the camp. There was no sign of anyone alive in the camp. The road didn’t continue on past this point… Vinya: Well, crap, y’all. We observed that we have a chicken and egg problem -- crazy people make the Machine to make crazy people. Elderron: Maybe the warlock (the Speaker) made a pact with the Hunger Between Worlds to learn how to make the machine. Making more cultists. Elderron also noticed that there was no saw here -- not even a place for one. Maybe they had a portable one? We checked in the remains of the metal Machine and didn’t see any sign of anything like a saw blade. We tried throwing some pieces of wood onto the composting wood pile and it didn’t change -- it just continued to be wood. Bringing the remains of the metal Machine near to the remains of what we believed to be a wooden Machine didn’t do anything, so we made camp inside the stockade, since it would be a defensible and safe position. We realized that this could be a cultist camp. We kept watches during the night, even though we were in the safety of the stockade. We heard at various times of the night the yowling of the jaguar hunting in the woods around us. On second watch, Elama, Elderron and Aldalómiel heard what sounded like shrieking or laughter off at a great distance in the direction we’d been going. Elderron: That’s highly unusual. He woke everyone else up and we all listened, poised for anything to happen. Fifteen minutes later, the shrieking laughter stopped. Elderron sent Oda out to take a look, but he didn’t see anything close to the camp. Marxine: The cat could have made a new meal. We agreed that was a definite possibility. 15 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 16) The next morning dawned cold, clear and wintry. Looking at the road outside the logging camp, we saw signs of something large and heavy having been dragged along the ground in the direction we’d been heading. That was the same direction we’d heard the shrieking laughter from. We headed out, going that way, following the drag-mark tracks. We presumed these were the sign of the heavy load of metal having been dragged to the camp from somewhere. Shortly after lunch, we started getting into some more mountainous terrain. We came upon a narrow valley with something that looked a bit like a Greek ampitheater, sized for giants, with the seats in an arc carved out of the mountain on one side and the stage against the mountain on the other side. We entered at the top of the seats.. From a distance, we could see something in a square (or polygonal/angular structure). As we got closer we could tell that it was an 11-ringed gimballed circle, like a huge version of the cultists’ holy symbol. Inside the innermost circle was a desiccated corpse. (The metal holy symbol is 11 rings joined to gimbal and spin in different directions. That was mounted so that it could spin on yet another axis inside the metal polyhedron on the stage. The corpse was inside the symbol.) Marxine looked at the corpse -- from the distance we were at (about 150’) she could see no sign of it being rotten, but we were still a ways off. Vinya looked around for any structures other than the ampitheater built into the sides of two mountains -- huts for actors to be in, a building with a green room or any of the other infrastructure specifically associated with a theater, a village for people who attend the theater in this place. That sort of thing. There was nothing in the vicinity. Elderron cast detect magic and walked toward the amphitheater, accompanied by Vinya and Marxine (in case this was an ambush of some sort). When the party were about 120’ from the stage, the rings began to spin, each on its own axis, until the corpse was facing us, its head lolling. Then its eyes opened and it began to shudder and twitch, yanking itself against the rusty spikes holding its hands and feet to the rings. Shrieking laughter rang forth in many voices and many timbres, while the body in the rings stared fixedly at the party. Beyond, a section of the cliff wall and floor slid down and away with a deep grinding and small showers of rock dust, opening a passage into the darkness. We ended there, with the darkness beckoning in front of us. [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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