Session Seventy-Six (Graveyard of Empires Summary)

Session 76 Summary

• This would’ve been a lot quicker, but I wasted a whole bunch of time typing out Session 74 again cos I’m a fool*

We were in the thick of things yet again. After entering the Calculation and Processing room, the shadow creatures had ambushed us, ringing myself, Thorfus, Chuq and Edan and putting our backs to the wall. After a brief exchange of blows, they dematerialise however, wailing the entire time in what apparently is Ancient Dwarven, though only Chuq can hear them. It seems they don’t like the sheer amount of magical light we’re carrying.

The lights seem to flicker in thier passing, and the gasps of shock alert us to their reappearance amongst the hirelings. Chuq quickly grabs Edan and shadow-steps into the melee, right on top of one of them. Myself and Thorfus have to hoof it the old-fashioned way. We clash briefly, and whilst we land a few blows, four of them gang up on Apolline, wounding him and dragging him down through the floor.

It’s a difficult fight, shadows aren’t exactly easy to hit, but in the middle of a crowd, mixed in amongst our own shadows and with a significant number of glowing weapons swinging around we were lucky we even knew where they were. I was lucky I had my suit, the odd visor helped immensely in identifying them. Oddly enough, they are still vulnerable to electricity as well, as Zelena uses up her stun stick’s charge in bringing one down.

The shadows are cowardly creatures it seems, as they swiftly disappear away from us again, going after the fleeing Fulbert. Four of them descend on the old man, whose only defence is Pons, who is looking to the south, and Sumnah, who is oddly brave but lacking the means to hurt them. The ancient elf launches a pair of arrows into the shadows, but succeeds only in hitting Fulbert in the eye. A mercy kill I’m sure, as he was seconds from becoming one of the foul creatures.

Two more appear behind Owyn and Guarinus, so myself and Thorfus run into save them whilst everyone else head to the octagonal portal room. Thankfully we pinned the doors open. I gulp down a healing potion as we charge in, only to be greeted by two more suddenly appearing in front of us.

We clear the room as quick as we can. The shadows seem to explode after a fashion when they die, but even with that we can’t be sure none escaped. I bring down the last visible, and we rush back out into the corridor. The shadows continue to assault anyone vulnerable or alone, leading us on a merry chase and seemingly avoiding Chuq especially. Slowly, we gather the entire party together in the portal room however, making things easier on us.

While we assess what to do, they strike again enmasse, several jumping on the weakened Owyn. We counter-attack as best we can, trying to bring the magically armed to the front and protect the others, who retreat through the northern airlock. In the scuffle, Zelena is dragged through the floor and Owyn narrowly avoids a similar fate. We banish three only to have another two appear from nowhere, but eventually we are able to bring them all down.

I’m quite proud to say I got the final blow.

The party as a whole heads north. The cell area is relatively safe from the shadows thanks to the airlock and Desric’s protections, and with a couple of rooms being open, we have a decent number of beds and space for people to rest a night.

Chuq however, has other ideas. There is no saving thier lives, much to Belroar’s dismay, but the monk believes he can at least retrieve some of thier equipment and perhaps thier bodies. Whilst me and Thorfus keeping an eye out from the observation room, Chuq returns to the portal room and shifts into the shadows.

After several long, tense moments he returns, carrying Zelena’s body and a bundle of ancient dwarven robes. He looks exhausted, no doubt people aren’t supposed to live in the shadows, and tells tales of the shadows being dead dwarven acolytes. Disturbingly, Zelena has suffered additional injuries, and it seems as if we had fought and killed her shadow as well.

We’re happy for his success, and take the time to lay Zelena and Fulbert to rest. After, we set a customary watch from within the observation room, but go for a longer twelve hours due to the number of injuries. I take a bit of time to talk to Sturloc during our watch. The hireling has been finding it tough, especially now with Talon gone too.

By morning, we set Edan up with some of the Elven gear we’d recovered, recovered our strength, and healed a few of the injuries. We eat breakfast, finishing off most of out water, and Thorfus starts fiddling with the pedestals, hoping the platinum key gives us access to something more. He gets three options, which seems to be no different to before, except for acknowledging the key’s presence. He activates the sonic deterrent, which merely sets of an ear-splitting noise below, evidently the signal the dwarven captors used to send thier prisoners back to cells.

We decide to test the key with the portal to the north, and discover a broken key scattered around the pedestal there. Our key doesn’t seem to work. Checking the shards, we discover the key was similar to ours, but with an extra option of an ‘x’.

We spend some more time going through the bio-forge cubes, reading through the cryptic notes, learning what the dwarves thought of humans, elves, orcs, kobolds, ogres and lizardmen from thier studies. Several addendums note the potential uses of the various species for the dwarven empire, such as the orcs possibly making good ‘undying berserkers’.

The reptilian cubes are next, and we learn about how they tried to subvert the dragon species for war, including the creation of wingless drakes. The larger reptiles were deemed deadly, but unintelligent, and nowhere near strong enough to combat a dragon. The raptors were considered useful as ‘attack dogs’, being deployed through the portal system, though the council overruled this decision. Apparently, experiments were underway to compine the raptor’s intelligence with the larger lizard’s strength.

(John, have you been watching Jurassic World? xD )

Attempting to close the southern portal from here ends with failure, causing a flicker of power throughout the facility. It seems the power system in the southern room has been damaged, locking the portal open.

The party then plans to head back west, and collect the cubes from the calculation room. We leave behind most of the rescued prisoners and some of the injured, mostly taking anybody with a magical weapon. Chuq picks up mental activity to the east, but the west seems clear, so we gather up the cubes from both rooms in the east wing.

Unfortunately, we get jumped by a pair of shadows in the right-hand room. Naturally it was quite the ambush, as they managed to land two hits on me. TWO! I feel my strength get sapped yet again, the lucky gits. If they’d come at me honourably it’d have been a different story!

This time, with there only being two and us not needing to protect anybody, they quickly fall to our superior numbers.

The next task is to set up an area in order to combat the zombie horde to the east. We decide to fall back on our old ‘net across the door’ trick, adding the carts in as additional fall-back points and shooting platforms. Letting them come to us is the easiest method, especially since they’ll bottle neck in the airlock. Setting this up also give me time to get over the effects of the shadow’s touch.

Chuq goes ahead and pins the doors open, which prompts a reaction from the north, like the sound of a bunch of chairs scraping back and footsteps approaching. Chuq retreats and we prepare to fight. As the undead dwarves round the corner, they are met with a hail of arrows and bolts. A couple fall, but no less than sixteen charge down the corridor towards us. The net comes in handy, as me and Thorfus hack at the front ranks supported by Chuq and Beloar, more ranged fire flies over our heads to drop the rear ranks.

It’s a fairly easy fight, though I need a heal from Derich to keep going due to my earlier injuries. Even Sturloc and Kottar get in on the killing, scoring a few good hits with thier crossbows, it seems fish in the barrel style fights help them out quite nicely. Jaegar punctuates the end of the fight, pretty much exploding the skeleton’s skull.

After this fight, our spoils are becoming rather too many with the addition of the undead’s weapons, a small pile of platinum cutlery. We start piling loot in the corner of the room, since there is far too much even for the carts at this point. After Derich expends a few more heals on the party, we prepare to head east, though we’ll need to find water soon.