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The Fall of Civilization
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<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5014091" data-attributes="member: 1210"><p>From their elevated position, our heroes make the size of the enemy force to be a couple of dozen. They are still miles away, but- as they are Six-Fingered Hand troops- could operate very well in the dark.</p><p></p><p>“We have time,” says Cook. “Let us rig traps. We will kill them with deadfalls, and rolling boulders.”</p><p></p><p>“We don’t have that much time,” replies Iggy dubiously. </p><p></p><p>“Oi, we have enough.”</p><p></p><p>The party sets to work as evening comes on, first surveying the path up the face of the plateau and then moving piles of rocks, positioning large stones and crafting triggers that will cause them to rumble down at the enemy. The party only has a few hours, but- thanks to the abundant loose rock all over the face of the plateau- they manage to create a series of terrifically deadly traps. They work in the dark, trading the difficulties of doing so for the knowledge that the Hand troops approaching won’t be able to see their efforts until it is too late.</p><p></p><p>They work up until virtually the last minute- until the enemy is only a couple of hundred yards away. Though they cannot see them in the distance in the starlight, the party can hear their foes as they approach. Finally, having done all that they have time to do, the party retreats about a third of the way up the plateau’s face, planning to stay above and ahead of the enemy.</p><p></p><p>The Six-Fingered Hand squad reaches the bottom of the plateau. After a few minutes of searching in the dark, they find the ascent and begin their march upwards. </p><p></p><p>About ten minutes later, they reach the first trap. </p><p></p><p>Our heroes let the lead element go past, waiting for the main group to be under the trap. Then they trigger it, a slide of rocks starting with a large boulder and growing to include a rain of smaller stones. Goblins and kobolds scream as the stones pelt them, smashing skulls and breaking arms and legs. Into the chaos Hkatha and Iggy hurl flaming spells. Then the party retreats upwards, waiting until the enemy below them has recovered from its confusion and continues its ascent- to the next deadfall. A scene almost identical to that at the first trap ensues, differing mostly in that fewer of the Hand troops survive the initial assault, and this time our heroes rush their remaining enemies, cutting them down without mercy. </p><p></p><p>Ensuring that none of the enemy survive to spread word of their presence, our heroes then re-ascend the plateau to the group of survivors, who are in an uproar. Their safe haven, where they fled to escape the ravages of the Hand, has been discovered. Surely, now that the Hand knows of them, it will come to crush them. Has it not already sent a probe to test their strength?</p><p></p><p>“Those guys were the only ones that saw us,” predicts Captain Ligir, playing up his military position to the peasantry. “We killed them all. Anyone else that saw us is either too far away to respond or else figures that those guys have it under control. After all, how long has it been since anyone has taken out one of their scouting squads like that?”</p><p></p><p>“What you all need to do now,” interjects Captain Heimall (also playing up his rank), “is go to Fandelose. You’re right, they <em>do</em> know that you’re here, and they will come for you in time. But you can go to Fandelose. There are walls, there is food and shelter- we <em>fought off</em> the Hand’s army. We defeated them. We can offer you sanctuary- you, and any other Imperial citizens.”</p><p></p><p>“And your alternative,” Major Torinn (playing up his role as ranking officer) says, “is to wait for them to come for you.”</p><p></p><p>The argument lasts deep into the night. The party’s reasoning is sound, and in the morning the peasants begin to leave. Our heroes leave, too, heading southward- continuing their journey towards Northshore. They come to another of the plateaus in the afternoon of the following day.</p><p></p><p>“Should we bother to check it out?” asks Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>“Yes,” Hkatha replies. “There might be more survivors that we can recruit to go back to Fandelose.” </p><p></p><p>Once again, the party searches the base of the plateau until they find a path heading upward, concealed from casual observation, but not from a diligent search. They start to ascend. After they have gotten about 100’ up, Vann-La halts. “Look back there,” she says. “Someone is coming our way: a small group, looks like armored figures.”</p><p></p><p>“Should we wait for them?” wonders Cook.</p><p></p><p>Hkatha shrugs. “Why not? Best we don’t lead them up there without knowing what is hiding at the top. We don’t need to spoil any survivors’ hiding places again.”</p><p></p><p>“It is an effective way of getting them to move to Fandelose,” Torinn comments wryly. </p><p></p><p>It doesn’t take too long for the six figures- all of them warforged- to reach the trail leading up the plateau’s face and to close the distance to our heroes. Though not immediately hostile, they move with relentless purpose. </p><p></p><p>“Hi there,” says Torinn.</p><p></p><p>The lead warforged speaks. “We are searching for another one such as us, a solitary one. Have you seen it?”</p><p></p><p>“Why do you ask?” Vann-La replies. “What do you seek with him?”</p><p></p><p>“It is a renegade,” the speaker says. “We must find it and stop it before it achieves its goals.”</p><p></p><p>“Is it working with the Six-Fingered Hand?” </p><p></p><p>“What are its goals?” asks Heimall. </p><p></p><p>To Vann-La: “No.” Turning to Heimall, the warforged continues, “Its goals concern only our own kind. It is irrational. It calls itself 240Z.”</p><p></p><p>“Well,” admits Hkatha, “we did see the warforged of which you speak, and we spoke with it briefly. But it didn’t tell us where it was going, or what it was doing.”</p><p></p><p>“Yeah, it left in a hurry, too,” adds Iggy. </p><p></p><p>The warforged start moving without another word, passing through our heroes and further up the face of the plateau. </p><p></p><p>“Creepy,” comments Iggy.</p><p></p><p>“I really don’t know if I trust the warforged anymore,” mutters Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>Iggy scoffs. “Any more? They made it pretty clear from the start that they were pursuing an agenda of their own, and it just had something in common with ours- the survival of Fandelose. I don’t know if we should have ever trusted them.”</p><p></p><p>Heimall glances to the west, where the distant sea has half-swallowed the Sun.* “It’s getting dark. Let’s keep moving and get up to the top.”</p><p></p><p>The warforged quickly disappear above them. The living weapons are moving quickly, while our heroes, at the end of a long day’s journey, are tired and footsore. They take their time; it seems unlikely that the warforged will molest any survivors, and so there is no real urgency to reach the top at the same time as them. When the party finally gets to the top, they find more peasant refugees awaiting them. This time a small group of about a half-dozen stand behind a barricade of hay, pitchforks and hoes held like weapons in their hands. </p><p></p><p>“Hello,” calls Heimall. “I am Captain Heimall Heinrikson of the Imperial Army. We are from the city of Fandelose, where we have not only held out against the Six-Fingered Hand- but where we have defeated it.”</p><p></p><p>While Heimall speaks, Vann-La mutters to Iggy, “I don’t see any sign of the warforged.”</p><p></p><p>“I wonder where they got to?” the wizard replies. </p><p></p><p>Heimall sooths the crowd with his smooth tongue, reassuring them that there is hope for the future of the Empire and then offering them that hope: Fandelose. The others pitch in, each adding another piece of that future possible. Soon the pitchforks and hoes are propped back on peasant shoulders as the beer is passed around, and everyone is a friend. </p><p></p><p>Though the party asks after the warforged, the people living on the plateau haven’t seen them. “Are there any weird features or military buildings up here?” asks Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>“Well,” says one of the locals, “there is a really big locked building that nobody has ever gotten into. It has been up here longer than we have.”</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>“Oi, this is a pretty good lock,” declares Cook. His thieves’ tools click inside it as he works to open it. The building it locks is extraordinarily large- the size of a large castle. </p><p></p><p>”I could help with that, you know,” offers Iggy.**</p><p></p><p><em>Click.</em> “I got it.”</p><p></p><p>The door is exceptionally large. “Maybe it’s some kind of warehouse,” suggests Torinn. He, Heimall and Vann-La together heave the door open, and find that there is pretty much a single huge room inside the huge building (although two small side rooms exist, they hardly count when compared to the central hanger). Within that expanse are a large number of... winged vehicles of some sort.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell?” asks Iggy.</p><p></p><p>The party moves in and looks the things over. They are indeed winged. “Do these things fly?” Vann-La says.</p><p></p><p>“They just might,” replies Hkatha. “I think they are ornithopters.”</p><p></p><p>“What’s an ornithopter?” </p><p></p><p>Hkatha points at the vehicles.</p><p></p><p>“Right,” says Iggy.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>The two other rooms are an office and a wardrobe. The office is clearly an Army office; there are tons of documents present, which our heroes start looking through. They quickly determine that the documents that exist are unimportant, designed to obfuscate whatever was going on here. However, the wardrobe turns out to have a very interesting selection of uniforms- an elite unit called the Eagles, with some very interesting insignia, goggles, caps, downy jackets, warm scarves and high gloves. </p><p></p><p>“Time for a fashion upgrade,” says Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>Most of our heroes loot some elements of the Eagle uniforms to add to their ensemble. The uniforms are of noteworthy quality. </p><p></p><p>“Well, what about these things, then?” Iggy points at the ornithopters.</p><p></p><p>”I think we ought to issue a <em>sending</em> to Colonel Jaxe,” opines Heimall. “We should inform him of what we’ve found and see what he says. These may be a valuable resource for our fight against the Six-Fingered Hand.”</p><p></p><p>“Hey,” Torinn says, his head inside one of the cockpits, “there are levers in here!”</p><p></p><p>“You should probably get out of there,” Heimall recommends, “before you end up going off the edge of the plateau.”</p><p></p><p>Torinn pulls his head out of the cockpit and looks thoughtful, but his eyes linger on the levers.***</p><p></p><p>“<em>Sending</em> first,” insists Heimall.</p><p></p><p>“Shouldn’t we know if they work before we report in?” asks Torinn.</p><p></p><p>The party looks the flying machines over for signs of obvious mechanical damage, and to their chagrin, they find it on most of the ornithopters. Of the two dozen machines, only ten seem to be in good repair. </p><p></p><p>“All right, what about the <em>sending?</em>” says Heimall.</p><p></p><p>Torinn climbs in the cockpit. “Let’s just see what happens,” he calls out. “I’ll be careful.”</p><p></p><p>“God dammit,” the warlord sighs.</p><p></p><p>Torinn quickly discovers that the ornithopter is powered by a collection of levers, hand pumps and foot pedals. He starts to wheel forward, but hits the brake before he picks up too much speed. Still, it takes a disconcertingly long time for the big machine to come to a stop, well outside the hanger. “I think whoever flies this would have to be able to exert himself continuously for the length of their flight,” he tells the others. “It seems to be poured by, well, my arms and legs.”</p><p></p><p>“You are full of strength and stamina,” Iggy points out. </p><p></p><p>“Hell with it,” Torinn says, and starts pumping the pedals and hand pumps. The ornithopter begins to roll forward again, and this time the Dragon tries to increase his speed rather than decrease it. There is a path outside the hanger that leads towards the edge of the plateau. </p><p></p><p><em>Makes sense,</em> he thinks.</p><p></p><p>The ornithopter shoots off the edge of the plateau.</p><p></p><p><em><strong>Next Time:</strong></em> To Northshore!</p><p></p><p>*On Cydra (my campaign world), the Sun actually orbits the island of Forinthia at a mean distance of roughly 780,000 miles, so it really <em>does</em> go into the sea at night. Of course, our heroes aren’t on Forinthia, they are on a continent several thousand miles to the west of Forinthia (Dorhaus). </p><p></p><p>**He is, after all, a multiclassed rogue. </p><p></p><p>***As a cleric of Lester, the god of adventure, Torinn loves to pull them levers!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 5014091, member: 1210"] From their elevated position, our heroes make the size of the enemy force to be a couple of dozen. They are still miles away, but- as they are Six-Fingered Hand troops- could operate very well in the dark. “We have time,” says Cook. “Let us rig traps. We will kill them with deadfalls, and rolling boulders.” “We don’t have that much time,” replies Iggy dubiously. “Oi, we have enough.” The party sets to work as evening comes on, first surveying the path up the face of the plateau and then moving piles of rocks, positioning large stones and crafting triggers that will cause them to rumble down at the enemy. The party only has a few hours, but- thanks to the abundant loose rock all over the face of the plateau- they manage to create a series of terrifically deadly traps. They work in the dark, trading the difficulties of doing so for the knowledge that the Hand troops approaching won’t be able to see their efforts until it is too late. They work up until virtually the last minute- until the enemy is only a couple of hundred yards away. Though they cannot see them in the distance in the starlight, the party can hear their foes as they approach. Finally, having done all that they have time to do, the party retreats about a third of the way up the plateau’s face, planning to stay above and ahead of the enemy. The Six-Fingered Hand squad reaches the bottom of the plateau. After a few minutes of searching in the dark, they find the ascent and begin their march upwards. About ten minutes later, they reach the first trap. Our heroes let the lead element go past, waiting for the main group to be under the trap. Then they trigger it, a slide of rocks starting with a large boulder and growing to include a rain of smaller stones. Goblins and kobolds scream as the stones pelt them, smashing skulls and breaking arms and legs. Into the chaos Hkatha and Iggy hurl flaming spells. Then the party retreats upwards, waiting until the enemy below them has recovered from its confusion and continues its ascent- to the next deadfall. A scene almost identical to that at the first trap ensues, differing mostly in that fewer of the Hand troops survive the initial assault, and this time our heroes rush their remaining enemies, cutting them down without mercy. Ensuring that none of the enemy survive to spread word of their presence, our heroes then re-ascend the plateau to the group of survivors, who are in an uproar. Their safe haven, where they fled to escape the ravages of the Hand, has been discovered. Surely, now that the Hand knows of them, it will come to crush them. Has it not already sent a probe to test their strength? “Those guys were the only ones that saw us,” predicts Captain Ligir, playing up his military position to the peasantry. “We killed them all. Anyone else that saw us is either too far away to respond or else figures that those guys have it under control. After all, how long has it been since anyone has taken out one of their scouting squads like that?” “What you all need to do now,” interjects Captain Heimall (also playing up his rank), “is go to Fandelose. You’re right, they [i]do[/i] know that you’re here, and they will come for you in time. But you can go to Fandelose. There are walls, there is food and shelter- we [i]fought off[/i] the Hand’s army. We defeated them. We can offer you sanctuary- you, and any other Imperial citizens.” “And your alternative,” Major Torinn (playing up his role as ranking officer) says, “is to wait for them to come for you.” The argument lasts deep into the night. The party’s reasoning is sound, and in the morning the peasants begin to leave. Our heroes leave, too, heading southward- continuing their journey towards Northshore. They come to another of the plateaus in the afternoon of the following day. “Should we bother to check it out?” asks Hkatha. “Yes,” Hkatha replies. “There might be more survivors that we can recruit to go back to Fandelose.” Once again, the party searches the base of the plateau until they find a path heading upward, concealed from casual observation, but not from a diligent search. They start to ascend. After they have gotten about 100’ up, Vann-La halts. “Look back there,” she says. “Someone is coming our way: a small group, looks like armored figures.” “Should we wait for them?” wonders Cook. Hkatha shrugs. “Why not? Best we don’t lead them up there without knowing what is hiding at the top. We don’t need to spoil any survivors’ hiding places again.” “It is an effective way of getting them to move to Fandelose,” Torinn comments wryly. It doesn’t take too long for the six figures- all of them warforged- to reach the trail leading up the plateau’s face and to close the distance to our heroes. Though not immediately hostile, they move with relentless purpose. “Hi there,” says Torinn. The lead warforged speaks. “We are searching for another one such as us, a solitary one. Have you seen it?” “Why do you ask?” Vann-La replies. “What do you seek with him?” “It is a renegade,” the speaker says. “We must find it and stop it before it achieves its goals.” “Is it working with the Six-Fingered Hand?” “What are its goals?” asks Heimall. To Vann-La: “No.” Turning to Heimall, the warforged continues, “Its goals concern only our own kind. It is irrational. It calls itself 240Z.” “Well,” admits Hkatha, “we did see the warforged of which you speak, and we spoke with it briefly. But it didn’t tell us where it was going, or what it was doing.” “Yeah, it left in a hurry, too,” adds Iggy. The warforged start moving without another word, passing through our heroes and further up the face of the plateau. “Creepy,” comments Iggy. “I really don’t know if I trust the warforged anymore,” mutters Hkatha. Iggy scoffs. “Any more? They made it pretty clear from the start that they were pursuing an agenda of their own, and it just had something in common with ours- the survival of Fandelose. I don’t know if we should have ever trusted them.” Heimall glances to the west, where the distant sea has half-swallowed the Sun.* “It’s getting dark. Let’s keep moving and get up to the top.” The warforged quickly disappear above them. The living weapons are moving quickly, while our heroes, at the end of a long day’s journey, are tired and footsore. They take their time; it seems unlikely that the warforged will molest any survivors, and so there is no real urgency to reach the top at the same time as them. When the party finally gets to the top, they find more peasant refugees awaiting them. This time a small group of about a half-dozen stand behind a barricade of hay, pitchforks and hoes held like weapons in their hands. “Hello,” calls Heimall. “I am Captain Heimall Heinrikson of the Imperial Army. We are from the city of Fandelose, where we have not only held out against the Six-Fingered Hand- but where we have defeated it.” While Heimall speaks, Vann-La mutters to Iggy, “I don’t see any sign of the warforged.” “I wonder where they got to?” the wizard replies. Heimall sooths the crowd with his smooth tongue, reassuring them that there is hope for the future of the Empire and then offering them that hope: Fandelose. The others pitch in, each adding another piece of that future possible. Soon the pitchforks and hoes are propped back on peasant shoulders as the beer is passed around, and everyone is a friend. Though the party asks after the warforged, the people living on the plateau haven’t seen them. “Are there any weird features or military buildings up here?” asks Hkatha. “Well,” says one of the locals, “there is a really big locked building that nobody has ever gotten into. It has been up here longer than we have.” *** “Oi, this is a pretty good lock,” declares Cook. His thieves’ tools click inside it as he works to open it. The building it locks is extraordinarily large- the size of a large castle. ”I could help with that, you know,” offers Iggy.** [i]Click.[/i] “I got it.” The door is exceptionally large. “Maybe it’s some kind of warehouse,” suggests Torinn. He, Heimall and Vann-La together heave the door open, and find that there is pretty much a single huge room inside the huge building (although two small side rooms exist, they hardly count when compared to the central hanger). Within that expanse are a large number of... winged vehicles of some sort. “What the hell?” asks Iggy. The party moves in and looks the things over. They are indeed winged. “Do these things fly?” Vann-La says. “They just might,” replies Hkatha. “I think they are ornithopters.” “What’s an ornithopter?” Hkatha points at the vehicles. “Right,” says Iggy. *** The two other rooms are an office and a wardrobe. The office is clearly an Army office; there are tons of documents present, which our heroes start looking through. They quickly determine that the documents that exist are unimportant, designed to obfuscate whatever was going on here. However, the wardrobe turns out to have a very interesting selection of uniforms- an elite unit called the Eagles, with some very interesting insignia, goggles, caps, downy jackets, warm scarves and high gloves. “Time for a fashion upgrade,” says Hkatha. Most of our heroes loot some elements of the Eagle uniforms to add to their ensemble. The uniforms are of noteworthy quality. “Well, what about these things, then?” Iggy points at the ornithopters. ”I think we ought to issue a [i]sending[/i] to Colonel Jaxe,” opines Heimall. “We should inform him of what we’ve found and see what he says. These may be a valuable resource for our fight against the Six-Fingered Hand.” “Hey,” Torinn says, his head inside one of the cockpits, “there are levers in here!” “You should probably get out of there,” Heimall recommends, “before you end up going off the edge of the plateau.” Torinn pulls his head out of the cockpit and looks thoughtful, but his eyes linger on the levers.*** “[i]Sending[/i] first,” insists Heimall. “Shouldn’t we know if they work before we report in?” asks Torinn. The party looks the flying machines over for signs of obvious mechanical damage, and to their chagrin, they find it on most of the ornithopters. Of the two dozen machines, only ten seem to be in good repair. “All right, what about the [i]sending?[/i]” says Heimall. Torinn climbs in the cockpit. “Let’s just see what happens,” he calls out. “I’ll be careful.” “God dammit,” the warlord sighs. Torinn quickly discovers that the ornithopter is powered by a collection of levers, hand pumps and foot pedals. He starts to wheel forward, but hits the brake before he picks up too much speed. Still, it takes a disconcertingly long time for the big machine to come to a stop, well outside the hanger. “I think whoever flies this would have to be able to exert himself continuously for the length of their flight,” he tells the others. “It seems to be poured by, well, my arms and legs.” “You are full of strength and stamina,” Iggy points out. “Hell with it,” Torinn says, and starts pumping the pedals and hand pumps. The ornithopter begins to roll forward again, and this time the Dragon tries to increase his speed rather than decrease it. There is a path outside the hanger that leads towards the edge of the plateau. [i]Makes sense,[/i] he thinks. The ornithopter shoots off the edge of the plateau. [i][b]Next Time:[/b][/i][b][/b] To Northshore! *On Cydra (my campaign world), the Sun actually orbits the island of Forinthia at a mean distance of roughly 780,000 miles, so it really [i]does[/i] go into the sea at night. Of course, our heroes aren’t on Forinthia, they are on a continent several thousand miles to the west of Forinthia (Dorhaus). **He is, after all, a multiclassed rogue. ***As a cleric of Lester, the god of adventure, Torinn loves to pull them levers! [/QUOTE]
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