Session Ninety-Five (Graveyard of Empires Summary)
Session 95
29th Faurilden, 10:10am
The party sits at the Engineering portal, watching Thorfus direct one of the monkeys through the Pathogen labs. He reports seeing the one group of creatures get shocked in response to breaking the window, though the others seem unable to damage the window at all. The monkey is now at the edge of his range however, leaving us unable to see more.
We pause to consider the next move, wondering about the defences, and whether a third portal could dial in at all whilst we held this connection open. Thorfus moves closer to the portal on our side to extend his range, allowing the monkey to look around the nearby corners. Doing so seems to trigger the lighting in the area to turn on, although it appears flickery, indicating possible power problems.
To the east, the corridor turns north east, with a door sitting in the middle of the north-west wall, appearing to be locked. The south-east wall is still entirely glass holding back the ten oozing humanoids we can see, and there appears to be an electrical hoist sometimes visible beneath their feet. Behind them, another glass wall reveals another corridor, and a pair of door beside them.
Chuq asks for a closer look at the creatures, and the monkey reveals them to be seemingly naked humans, or perhaps elves, of both sexes. Thier skin is rubbery and gives way quite easily, as evidenced by thier blows and whenever they collide, and it seems that whatever the bone structure they may have would be dislocated by our standards. They seem quite mindless, only intent on getting through the glass.
Thorfus directs the monkey to continue down the corridor, it first turning north, then north-west, as if circling the portal room. The lights seem to follow the monkey, activating ahead of it and deactivating behind. Another glass room to the north-east is devoid of occupants, though there is another electrical hoist present.
Whilst this is going on, Chuq sends Socrates through the portal to triangulate his location with Finkleworm. On return, the owl relays that Finklemur believes that we are closer than our previous location, and potentially able to arrive within a day. We tell him to start digging, though Socrates says the wizard is distracted, and apparently having trouble perceiving time. As far as we can tell, when the owl returns, there has been no ill effects of being on the other side.
As the monkey continues round, another glass chamber to the north-west is revealed, this time filled with humanoids covered in fungal growths. The lights coming on seem to waken them, and like the others they press forward and begin beating on the glass.
Continuing the circuit, the monkey passes yet more windowless locked doors. The south-west room now however is empty beyond its cracked glass. There are no signs that the doors or hoist within have been used, but the monkey’s senses show picked up nothing of the bony creature’s egress. We guess they went south.
The south-most room still holds the four necrotic humanoids, some sitting, some standing, and completely reactionless despite the door remaining open this entire time.
Whilst we consider what to do next, Edan question Kalgunn on what he thinks of the creatures in the facility. The sword-dwarf guesses that the four in the southern room are dwarven researchers who succumbed to disease at some point, unlike the others which were obviously test subjects, though he doesn’t know much more than that, as it wasn’t his area. Razumin was the administrator of the facility, and he doesn’t really know where his office would be, except that the facility has layered defenses and it would be undoubtedly be beyond them.
Agreeing to keep scouting as best we can, and potentially find more suits, we close the door to the south, and move to check each of the cardinal rooms. The east reveals a 60ft long hallway with nine doors some locked and some unlocked. Thorfus has the monkey check the closest room to the north, revealing a familiar looking set of residential quarters.
Closing the area and heading north reveals a square room with a tall ceiling that also contains a balcony, with familiar furniture to the southern room. Three infected creatures react as the doors open from up on the balcony, two rubbermen and one bony creature. The leap off of the balcony, the bony creature falling badly, and charge forwards, but the monkey is able to shut the door in thier faces. As it retreats however, the door quickly reopens, so Thorfus has the monkey retreat back south around to the west.
He opens the western ‘airlock’ to the portal, and steps through. The banging from before starts up from the one-way glass on the south-eastern wall. The three creatures charge down the corridor, stopping at the doorway, seemingly aware in someway. The bony creature seems restless even, and eventually moves out of view, but none of them want to enter the room. As the monkey watches, it can see the remnants of white cloth that may be similar to the robes from the bioforge.
Thorfus has the monkey reach for the button, which elicits a slight recoil from the creatures, speaking of some intelligence. He presses it, and the door closes, causing the metal globes to hum louder momentarily and scan the monkey, before the mist is released once again. After a moment, the door to the portal room enters.
Inspecting the slag piles reveals them to be made up of various metals, some precious, and Thorfus has the monkey drag them into the portal room, as some of it may be retrieval and worth something. He repeats this for the north and eastern ‘airlocks’.
Once done, the monkey is sent back through the south again, once more getting sprayed. Entering the corridor, he runs right back into the creatures again, so it retreats and presses the button again.
It seems we are trapped, so with the helmets from the enviromental suits and Chuq’s natural resistance, the two dwarves and the monk head through the portal. We ready up in the south room with ranged weapons. We get misted, and there is nothing there when the door opens, but with a shout, Axel draws the bony creature back to the door. It is met with arrows and daggers, and Axel’s second shot is able to bring it down.
As it falls, one of the rubbermen appears. Chuq sets his spear for a charge, whilst Axel and Thorfus continue to fire, though thier arrows seems to bounce off, seemingly harmlessly. Thorfus also has the monkey charge and attack the creature. The rubberman ignores the monkey and instead leans down and lifts the bony creature, then throws it at the pedestal as if trying to hit the button.
It misses luckily, and Axel retaliates with a well-placed firebomb, the oil splashing over both creatures. They recoil, their flesh melting slightly. Thorfus charges in alongside his monkey, and his sword manages to hurt the second creature, and we all move up into melee. We kill the one and hurt the other, but it steps back away from the door. We follow it out, continuing to draw ichor from it with every blow.
The creature falls back even further, hitting the button to the southern room and retreating within. Rather than follow it into the four creatures within, we elect to continue shooting it, which forces it to hide. The monkey gives chase, attacking it in the corner of the room, and the rotting creatures finally react, surrounding and attacking the tiny automaton.
It gets dismantled by a rain of rotten blows, so after another firebomb is tossed into the room, Chuq closes the door and Thorfus locks it. Thorfus turns around and pushes the rubberman corpse into the airlock, pushing the button with a ten-foot pole and incinerating the two corpses.
After that, we decide to head north to the room with the balcony. As we pass, Chuq’s ESP picks up a mess of confusion, hunger and the desire to destroy. In the north room, we decide to head through the door to the east, which opens into a hallway. The hallway curves around to the north, heading up some stairs and into a smaller room with double doors to the north and south. The tops of each wall have moving murals of double helixes combining and recombining.
In the centre of the room, a hologram shows a creature with a polyhedral head, cyclindrical body and six stringy tails, though there is no obvious projection point.
We check the southern door, revealing the now empty balcony, and lock the door, then repeat the action with the western door after confirming a corresponding staircase. The north double door is next, where Chuq senses a presence he describes as ‘a lot of crazy’.
Leaving that for now, we head down the west stairs, seeing the fungal creatures beyond a glass wall at the bottom. We decide to check the second door at the base of the stairs, which is locked. Chuq still senses crazy, and we can’t hear anything over the ambient humming. After a second of considering the facility’s layout, Axel realises the door opens directly into the creature’s pen.
We head back out into the circling corridor and try the door on the north-west interior wall. We hear nothing, and opening it reveals the other side of the mirrored walls of the ‘airlocks’. Several displays show the views from the domes, as well as access listings, noting the monkey’s usages of the doors. A pedestal holds a holographic display.
We check the pedestal, which displays some unknown language made up of odd icons, which at best we recognise a commonly recurring symbol that looks like an eyeball. Chuq mentally relays the symbols to Edan who confers with Kalgunn, who says it’s malfunctioning in some fashion. He recommends use of a PAS key, and in doing so, the pedestal flips over to Ancient Dwarven instead, with the following options.
-Review Readouts of Recent Beings in Cleansing Chamber
-Security Footage
-Manual Activation of Defences
-Door Lock
The logs correspond to the north and west airlocks, which mainly show the access of the monkey at several points, then the unauthorised access of a number of non-dwarven entities, which were destroyed, then more entries of passing dwarves. Both airlocks are the same roughly in logs, but northern has six dwarves enter the facility before the monkey but after the non-dwarves.
We head out to check the logs in what we presume are other rooms in the ring, stopping only to check the western door first. Scouting with the circlet, Thorfus picks up eight large automaton presences below us, which are four armed, treaded automatons plugged into the walls.
Thorfus takes control of one and sends it east, entering a long hallway with large number of various types of the humanoid creatures within. They retreat at the sight of the automaton, although Thorfus cannot detect any weapons on it. Checking with the automaton, it reveals itself as a ‘grappling unit’, designed to grab test subjects. We instantly begin planning how best to utilise it to our advantage.
Meanwhile, the Grappler is sent west, revealing the hall surrounds the central bay. Thorfus directs it to the south-west hoist, though it cannot get out of the pen there, so it gets redirected to the north-east hoist, where we can open the door safely, though there we realise it is too wide to get through the door.
We decide to test its grappling abilities, sending it down into the creatures below, and manage to catch one of the rubber creatures. We have the Grappler bring it up to us, and Chuq suggests testing thier odd intelligence by attempting to communicate with it. It recognises Thorfus’ Ancient Dwarven, but that seems only to focus its anger. Realising we’ll get nothing from it, Thorfus apologises and ends its life.