Session Seven Summary (Graveyard of Empires: After the Fall)
Session 7, August 19 2020
Introduction
The party has successfully led the Montoan refugees home and recaptured their village from the Shemmites. However, Vikram is missing and may have been captured by dark elves. We continue on the morning of the 9th of Tenrilden with the party preparing to begin their search for the djinn ...
Session Summary
Session 7 - Wednesday, August 19, 2020
The morning of the 9th of Tenrilden in Montoa.
Montoans wash the bodies of their dead and their wounds seal up, but they remain dead.
Kalea tell us that the vessels were clay with symbols that resemble ancient common.
She draws what she recalls of them.
Rallion suggests that perhaps the clay of the lake can be used to make new vessels along with the water to wet it.
One member of the village has experience working clay, so they will try it.
Bavmorda elects to stay in Montoa for the sister power.
Kauri uses the "Matriarch" dagger from the alternate shrine with the sacrificial alter to carve a light rune on Laris and he casts light on the dagger. It lasts about the same time as the pre-magiocalypse spell (2 hours) and carving the rune takes about as much time as casting time.
Kauri asks TikTok how far he can sense Vikram. It depends. Generally requires the same distance as we speak to each other, or he can sense creatures shadow stepping, and sometimes tell what they are.
We bind the hands of the Shem prisoner, Hun-Batz and make him show us where they met the drow.
Rallion pledges to Kalea to do all he can to protect Montoa and return it to greatness.
A couple hours later we find a clearing with the scattered remnants of a magic circle made from a mix of chalk and salt.
We also find a used scroll. The prisoner tells us something like Vikram was working with the drow.
Braadlur confirms the scroll is of a skin type used by the Drow.
Kauri and Oskar take the prisoner back to Montoa where Kalea promises a trial. They turn to follow after us.
We leave signs using Fisher's sticky excretion. It only takes about ten minutes to come to a gully with a cave where a stream follows the gully.
Braadlur & Fisher checked out the cave and Fisher could smell the Drow.
There was a fire off across the gully. We investigate the fire and it is from a piece of XenoTel that crashed and created a gash and broke trees. The fire is fading.
Find laser rifle, info cubes, environmental suits, and 200 platinum pieces.
Kauri, Oskar, Braadlur, & Fisher show up.
We investigate passages and stop at doors since there is no power and will have to be forced.
We find spiral stairs and hear a buzzing in the upper floor and find a giant hornet.
We surprise it and Braadlur carves Speak with Animals and the rest of us ready for a fight.
It wants to find the fields, and Braadlur points it to the exit and flies past us.
It goes past us and we left and went back to the cave.
Laris’ Journal
Ancient ritual research, Vikram’s vaporous trail, and a Deluxe apartment from the sky… in need of fumigating…
Tenrilden 8 Evening
My sense of urgency to find Vikram hasn’t passed, however our options to intervene on Vikram’s behalf have to wait until the morning. Peronell and I, along with Kauri’s magical expertise, fiddle with runes, bleeding and spellcasting in attempt to figure out a symbol for the invisibility spell. All for naught, however we are making progress, I hope. I mean how many iterations of invisible can you possibly have!? No, I’m not going to answer that… good thing for the lake I won’t have scars to prove exactly how many we tried tonight… however Light does work!
Kauri learns that a set amount of blood that is based on how powerful a spell is being cast can be meted out from the ‘donor.’ Way ahead of just bleeding a subject willy nilly.
Ancient common isn’t a straighforward language per se. It’s a rune based alphabet coupled with symbolic representations of concepts. Multiple meanings, connotations and nuances of each that can be inscribed abound. Figuring out which is tied to a specific magical effect is definitely not an efficient process. That and the means to bring about such an effect requires blood to be spilt. Which freaks Keliha out. I’m not sure Lambertus is on board with it either.
Rallion and some of the others discuss with Keliha about the vessels that could carry the lakewater’s healing properties for a time. She draws some Ancient Common symbols she remembers being on the pots. Peronell and I look them over. She suggests they’re crude and maybe incomplete, but they do relate to healing and such. I take notes and the party comes up with an idea of creating small clay pots using the local clay and lake water. Once the pots are made, the idea is to experiment with the runes to recreate the vessels that preserve the healing waters. There’s a potter here that will get started on such things. Maybe in a couple days we’ll have some prototypes to work with.
Kauri brings out TickTock, much to his delight, to chat a bit about things. He really is happy he’s not locked up and forgotten. According to Kauri the telepathic contact between DVL’s is only about as far as a mortal can speak to another. TickTock also tells us about the shadowstepping ripples we learned of from Vikram. He then goes on a bit about how time is a much more fundamental thing. This last about time, not sure where or how that fits in. It may have been in the translation from Kauri to us, but it didn’t seem to amount to anything just yet.
Braadlur seems to think that an underdark settlement, called Vilsnarg is where the drow party likely came from.
Alea and Bavmorda have been chatting a lot today. I wonder what she’s got up her sleeve.
I’m bummed we didn’t get out after Vikram tonight… however it’s probably for the best. Encountering drow at night isn’t likely good for one’s health.
Here’s to some good luck tomorrow. Right. “Good luck.” I think one of those was spotted a few years ago. Or at least that’s the rumor I heard.
Tenrilden 9 AM
Wow. Who’d have thunk it. And I can’t say it’s any good. Bavmorda has decided to take up with the Montoans for a bit. Help them rebuild. Plenty of opportunity to kill things, likely Shemites. Matriarchal based philosophy is settling for her?? We’ll see how long that lasts. And by damn I’ve lost my backup. I’ll miss having her watching my back and lining up my opportunistic attacks.
Rallion gets on his platform and does some pledging and stumping about rebuilding Montoa, returning Hun-Batz after we use him to guide us to the area where he and his late partner ran up on the Drow party and likely Vikram.
We head out.
After a couple hours, we come upon a site with the remnants of a binding circle of chalk and salt. (Yes, Braadlur and I tasted it. So what.) We find a blank piece of high quality paper. Braadlur notes it’s of drow provenance. Hun-Batz said they were reading from that as Vikram was bound in the circle. He also states there was another like Vikram next to the one reading the scroll. Great. As if Drow by themselves aren’t bad enough. They’ve a djinn or similar in their service. Things ain’t looking good.
The drow site is in a straight line from Old Greybeard to Montoa. They very well could have been tipped off that Vikram (or our party?) was travelling along this general path.
Rallion and Braadlur discuss the fate of Hun-Batz. It’s decided Oskar and Kauri are going to escort him back to Montoa for ‘justice’ and reunite with us as Rallion blazes a trail for them to follow on their return. Rather, Fisher creates a stinktrail of goo that you can’t miss.
Only about 10 minutes travel a bit southward, the drow trail leads down into a gully. There’s a little cave at the bottom of a hill with a stream trickling out. Footprints come and go from the cave. We also see smoke to the South across the gully. I shimmy up a tree to see if I can see anything. It looks like a large swath of jungle was burning about an hour or so South. The fires are dying out.
Braadlur and Fisher go into the cave which widens and slopes downward beyond our percepton. Fisher smells drow (spiderlovers as he calls them according to Braadlur).
Braadlur and Fisher hang at the cave awaiting the return of Kauri and Oskar while Rallion, Axel, Felix and I along with Peronell and Lambertus head toward the burned area.
The area is about 100’ wide and quite long. It’s pretty obvious something large fell from the sky. We find that it’s a large chunk of Xeno-Tel about 100’long, wide and high with about half of it buried in the jungle floor. The path to the station remnant is littered with Automaton parts, brain chunks and random bits of semi-recognizable parts and pieces.
We go in to check it out cautiously, the floor is at about a 20 degree angle to the ground but it’s not hard to navigate. We explore a couple hours or so and find some coin, a couple intact cubes and I grab one of a wrecked Mechassasin’s finger garrotes by removing his hand. I’ll get it set up proper when I get the chance. Braadlur helped us avoid an encounter with one of the giant hornet things by showing it the way out.
We meet back up with Kauri, Oskar, Alex and Felix outside the bit of station, mark our piece of space junk on the map, and make our way back to the gully to reunite with Fisher and Braadlur.
SO, we’re going underground, deep underground. Underdark even. To see if we can liberate a friend from a fully functioning magic user and/or cleric with a ‘friend that looked like Vikram’ and a retinue of allies with unknown capabilities that shoot poisoned bolts. Whose race happens to be backed by an insane, or maybe just extremely off kilter, spider daemon that went crazy and escaped from Asmodeous and for all intents and purposes adopted these shadow elves (Braadlur’s term).
Meh. Why not. I suppose I’ve done crazier things. Like, well, you know, followed a bunch of folks on a quest to save the world, consorted with DVL’s, and brought hell to Media...
Who’s idea was it to go after Vikram?
Geez, I hope this turns out better.
Bavmorda better not be having a good time. I’ll kick her ass… Figuratively of course.