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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7515048" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><strong>Shadow of the colossus</strong></p><p></p><p>Next, we find a room with exquisite storage racks for both wine and cheese, so we guess that this room has to be either Kasvarina's or Leone's. Just as Carlyle is about to appreciate the taste of whoever got this collection, we find traces of teleportation magic and get that someone left this room quite hastily not so long ago.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(guess what? Leone heard Asrabey shout at Grappa and realized that something was amiss)</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p>“It has to be Leone! We need to get to the project chamber, now!”</p><p></p><p>So we cast a haste spell and let Grappa guide us through the various corridors at high speed. Unfortunately, someone sounds an alarm while we're halfway through and one by one large bulkheads seal off the corridors. Auryn, Flying Spark and Carlyle, all fleet-footed, manage to outrun the bulkheads but Margit and Grappa fall behind. Looking at both the golem and his other partner, Carlyle has to make a decision and so he twists the flow of time to push Margit's time forward by a few seconds. This way we can draw her through the closing corridor, leaving only Grappa behind.</p><p></p><p>“Just go, leave me here! I take care of the rest and then find another way!” his robotic voice calls to us as the final bulk closes. </p><p> </p><p>After some long seconds we finally reach the gigantic project chamber where we freeze for a moment as we see one enormous colossus made of adamant standing in what appears to be a pool of witchoil. We also spot Leone Quintal who's standing on top of the colossus' head and who is surrounded by a swirling cloud of metal. The whole chamber is swarmed by other, smaller golems who patrol the ground floor and the bridges, therefore standing between Leone and us. </p><p></p><p>“Ah my guests have arrived. Take care of them.”</p><p></p><p>With these words Leone waves his hands and the smaller golems turn around to approach us. Carlyle doesn't have time for Leone's minions, so he uses a teleportation spell to bring the three of us next to Leone on the colossus' head. </p><p></p><p>“Like I told you before... you started a fight with the wrong people” Auryn says, being confident that this will be over soon. We then proceed to remove the first layer of Leone's metal cloud shield. </p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(This was a direct reference to her comment she gave Leone when he demanded to get Recklinghausen and revealed that his goonies had killed a young RHC agent in adventure 2. She never forgets and rarely forgives. At least not when her family and friends are involved)</span></p><p></p><p>Leone isn't really surprised though he seems a bit unnerved by the fact that he cannot control any part of our equipment. He instead orders the colossus to bring three of his minions to our “platform” on top of his head. The three golems agree to follow Leone's call to defend him and seem to have distinct personalities. Which is why Auryn asks them whether they'll really want to attack the relative of Kasvarina and her friends. </p><p></p><p>“Are you friends of father, too?” one of them asks before casually adding “Oh, how rude of me. I'm Linus.”</p><p> </p><p>“I'm Mr. Carlyle. nice to meet you, Mr. Linus” says Carlyle, and reaches out to the golem to shake his hand. He then confirms that Mr. Alexander Grappa is indeed our friend and ally, so we do not wish to hurt his children. </p><p></p><p>Auryn does the same and introduces herself to her two opponents with her full name. One of the golems, Hunting, is quite impressed by her long list of ancestors and he ceases all hostilities immediately. The other one, Colin, heeds Leone's orders however and lands a massive blow on her. </p><p></p><p>“What are you doing, Colin? You damaged father's friend!” Hunting protests. </p><p></p><p>Leone is obviously not very happy about this turn of events and so he proceeds to hurl metal objects at us. This doesn't help him either as we ignore the golems for now and cut down the metal mage's iron shield. Once that obstacle is removed, Leone doesn't pose much of a threat and he soon collapses, slipping off Borne's head. </p><p></p><p>In this very moment, Grappa finally enters the project chamber. He calls for his boys to stop attacking his friends and says that everything is fine. But with a last twitch of his hand, the falling Leone manages to manipulate one of the metal cranes to crush the body of Grappa. Fortunately, he doesn't hit the golem's head though. Just when the life leaves Leone's body, he falls into the pool of witchoil and vanishes. </p><p></p><p>Then the whole complex begins to tremble as a loud voice screams one word: “FATHER!”</p><p></p><p>The colossus suddenly breaks free of Leone's command. He steps out of the pool and we hurry to get off him and rescue the three golems and what's left of Grappa. We then take shelter in one of the side labs as the whole complex seems to collapse and the fabric of reality tears down. </p><p></p><p>Once we get the impression that the collapse has stopped, we carefully enter the main project chamber again and see... starlight. It appears that the ceiling of the chamber is somehow missing now and we seem to be back in Risur again. Another thing that's apparently missing is Borne. </p><p></p><p>We fear the worst and so we hurry, climb out of the destroyed complex and reach the top of Cauldron Hill where we find the colossus staring up into the starry sky. As much as this view makes our worst fears come true – the colossus managed to escape to our realm and is “alive” - we also realize that he is free of external control. So Auryn dares to approach him, believing that she may reach the “son” Grappa spoke of. </p><p></p><p>“The stars are beautiful, aren't they? Even in the far east, we revere their shining light.”</p><p></p><p>She then sings a calm elfaivaran song about the stars and the guidance they provide at night while moving in Borne's direction. The colossus seems to hear her song and so he turns his head in her direction, looking at her with a good amount of curiosity. He then tries to pick her up with his large hand, but Auryn realizes that this giant of a child doesn't know the full extend of his strength and so she dodges him.</p><p></p><p>“Careful, big boy. Tiny people like me are quit fragile and you don't want to crush me.”</p><p></p><p>Borne obviously doesn't seem to understand Auryn's words, so he continues his attempts to catch her. We realize that this is bad news indeed as the colossus might cause massive destruction should he get the idea that the city down there might be a more interesting playground. As he's more then 100 meters high, Borne could easily crush whole buildings with a stomp of his foot. We also spot one cavity inside his chest that appears to be fitting for the Wayfarer's Lantern but cannot grasp what the Obs would want to do with that as the golem is very obviously immune to magic.</p><p></p><p>We quickly decide that the officials need to know about this threat to the whole city, so Auryn asks Carlyle to head to the Aurum immediately and warn the king. As Borne seems to react to her, she'll try to keep him on her track even if this game will be pretty exhausting. She also asks Margit and Flying Spark to get Grappa's head and care for those who might be buried in the collapse. </p><p></p><p>Carlyle is a bit reluctant to leave Auryn, but he realizes that he's the only one who may reach the King in time and Auryn is the best bet when it comes to keeping Borne occupied. So he teleports in front of the Aurum and makes haste to reach King Aodhan. The latter just appears to have finished a long talk with the Danorans and so he's at first quite irritated when Carlyle warns him of an impeding catastrophe and proposes to evacuate the whole city. Carlyle then leads him outside to show him the towering giant atop Cauldron Hill and Aodhan turns pale. </p><p></p><p>“As I said: If that giant decides to come down here, our city is doomed. We need to evacuate everyone immediately. This is a force no one can dare to control.”</p><p></p><p>Aodhan takes a moment to sort his thoughts, then turns to Harkover Lee and nods. </p><p></p><p>“There may be a way to deal with him. An ancient ritual to banish him to the Dreaming. But it will need some time to be set up. And we need to bring him to the sea. By the way... where is your partner? I hope she's alright.”</p><p></p><p>Carlyle turns a bit nervous and then responds that his partner's whereabouts and bringing Borne to the sea might just go hand in hand as the colossus is currently chasing her and she's trying to keep him from moving down to the crowded districts. Aodhan seems relieved at this information and he then immediately orders his staff to bring the Danoran delegation to safety as dead diplomats is the last thing he wants. </p><p></p><p>Carlyle takes this as an opportunity to help explain the danger to the Danorans. He then gestures at Lya and asks her to have a few words in private. Carlyle points at the colossus who's now heading for what appears to be the Nettles and tells her that this is what the Obscurati were hiding in their complex in Cauldron Hill. It appears that their project is finished now, but something went wrong and now this monster is threatening to destroy a whole city. He asks her to think about her allegiance to this organization and to ask herself whether this can truly be the work of philanthropists. </p><p></p><p>Lya appears to be shocked about this development and hints that there is much she'll have to think about. Lastly, she also asks about Auryn and Carlyle, again, explains that she's the one who's trying to lead the giant away from the city. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(at this point we started making jokes about the Benny Hill theme as everyone imagined Auryn running away from Borne making use of all her crazy ideas. Carlyle's player always got his tablet ready so he played it at least one time <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> )</span></p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Auryn does her best to lead Borne towards the areas of Cloudwood and the Nettles that are only sparely inhabited. The boy also seems to have a short attention span as he's easily distracted by larger trees or buildings. This gives her some time to breathe, but she also has to work a bit to get his attention back. During her chase, she runs across Dame Jillian who helps her out with a flying spell just when Borne is about to run into a smaller community. She's able to get his attention back before he can cause much destruction, but she also has to witness how the colossus tramples over Mayor Doyle Idylls, leaving only a smashed puddle behind. </p><p></p><p>After a while, Carlyle returns and tells her about the plan of the King. After a while, Borne comes across a field full of flowers and he seems mesmerized for a while. We use this opportunity to call upon our connection to Srasama to send a message to the Old Stag: We tell him that a colossal, invulnerable, metal child has escaped the Bleak Gate complex and threatens to trample all of Flint under his feet. We explain that we'll try to lure him to the sea near Cloudwood, as he somehow reacts to Auryn or her songs, so the Bay area will be spared. He returns that he'll rally his crews to get the ships ready as soon as possible. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(Leaving this as a cliffhanger as this session really ended at this point. Phew, what a day. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">So it turns out Margit's divinations were spot on. And yeah, we didn't regret bringing Grappa with us, even if this guy is still strange and we don't fully trust him yet. He got a good heart, but he's far too chaotic to be really reliable. Not necessarily in terms of alignment though - both our characters are derivatives of neutral good themselves but with strong outliers in certain aspects. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">Also, the colossus... I remember making theories about the "true patriot conspirators" building a walking Coaltongue back in adventure 2. I even sent Tiz this video about the spirit vine giant mech from Legend of Korra as an example: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwMUtHzHBdo" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwMUtHzHBdo</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">And Borne is even bigger and less... controlable. He fortunately doesn't have a giant magic cannon mounted on top of him. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">Carlyle also did his best to convince Lya that the Obscurati are dangerous and not as honorable as she may have thought. I thought his last-minute intervention was pretty genius and it surely helped getting Lya a bit more sympathetic in the next chapter.</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">For Auryn and Borne... we'll see more about her relation towards the "big boy" in the next session. For now, she's trying to chase him through the woods.)</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7515048, member: 6816692"] [b]Shadow of the colossus[/b] Next, we find a room with exquisite storage racks for both wine and cheese, so we guess that this room has to be either Kasvarina's or Leone's. Just as Carlyle is about to appreciate the taste of whoever got this collection, we find traces of teleportation magic and get that someone left this room quite hastily not so long ago. [COLOR="#008000"](guess what? Leone heard Asrabey shout at Grappa and realized that something was amiss) [/COLOR] “It has to be Leone! We need to get to the project chamber, now!” So we cast a haste spell and let Grappa guide us through the various corridors at high speed. Unfortunately, someone sounds an alarm while we're halfway through and one by one large bulkheads seal off the corridors. Auryn, Flying Spark and Carlyle, all fleet-footed, manage to outrun the bulkheads but Margit and Grappa fall behind. Looking at both the golem and his other partner, Carlyle has to make a decision and so he twists the flow of time to push Margit's time forward by a few seconds. This way we can draw her through the closing corridor, leaving only Grappa behind. “Just go, leave me here! I take care of the rest and then find another way!” his robotic voice calls to us as the final bulk closes. After some long seconds we finally reach the gigantic project chamber where we freeze for a moment as we see one enormous colossus made of adamant standing in what appears to be a pool of witchoil. We also spot Leone Quintal who's standing on top of the colossus' head and who is surrounded by a swirling cloud of metal. The whole chamber is swarmed by other, smaller golems who patrol the ground floor and the bridges, therefore standing between Leone and us. “Ah my guests have arrived. Take care of them.” With these words Leone waves his hands and the smaller golems turn around to approach us. Carlyle doesn't have time for Leone's minions, so he uses a teleportation spell to bring the three of us next to Leone on the colossus' head. “Like I told you before... you started a fight with the wrong people” Auryn says, being confident that this will be over soon. We then proceed to remove the first layer of Leone's metal cloud shield. [COLOR="#008000"] (This was a direct reference to her comment she gave Leone when he demanded to get Recklinghausen and revealed that his goonies had killed a young RHC agent in adventure 2. She never forgets and rarely forgives. At least not when her family and friends are involved)[/COLOR] Leone isn't really surprised though he seems a bit unnerved by the fact that he cannot control any part of our equipment. He instead orders the colossus to bring three of his minions to our “platform” on top of his head. The three golems agree to follow Leone's call to defend him and seem to have distinct personalities. Which is why Auryn asks them whether they'll really want to attack the relative of Kasvarina and her friends. “Are you friends of father, too?” one of them asks before casually adding “Oh, how rude of me. I'm Linus.” “I'm Mr. Carlyle. nice to meet you, Mr. Linus” says Carlyle, and reaches out to the golem to shake his hand. He then confirms that Mr. Alexander Grappa is indeed our friend and ally, so we do not wish to hurt his children. Auryn does the same and introduces herself to her two opponents with her full name. One of the golems, Hunting, is quite impressed by her long list of ancestors and he ceases all hostilities immediately. The other one, Colin, heeds Leone's orders however and lands a massive blow on her. “What are you doing, Colin? You damaged father's friend!” Hunting protests. Leone is obviously not very happy about this turn of events and so he proceeds to hurl metal objects at us. This doesn't help him either as we ignore the golems for now and cut down the metal mage's iron shield. Once that obstacle is removed, Leone doesn't pose much of a threat and he soon collapses, slipping off Borne's head. In this very moment, Grappa finally enters the project chamber. He calls for his boys to stop attacking his friends and says that everything is fine. But with a last twitch of his hand, the falling Leone manages to manipulate one of the metal cranes to crush the body of Grappa. Fortunately, he doesn't hit the golem's head though. Just when the life leaves Leone's body, he falls into the pool of witchoil and vanishes. Then the whole complex begins to tremble as a loud voice screams one word: “FATHER!” The colossus suddenly breaks free of Leone's command. He steps out of the pool and we hurry to get off him and rescue the three golems and what's left of Grappa. We then take shelter in one of the side labs as the whole complex seems to collapse and the fabric of reality tears down. Once we get the impression that the collapse has stopped, we carefully enter the main project chamber again and see... starlight. It appears that the ceiling of the chamber is somehow missing now and we seem to be back in Risur again. Another thing that's apparently missing is Borne. We fear the worst and so we hurry, climb out of the destroyed complex and reach the top of Cauldron Hill where we find the colossus staring up into the starry sky. As much as this view makes our worst fears come true – the colossus managed to escape to our realm and is “alive” - we also realize that he is free of external control. So Auryn dares to approach him, believing that she may reach the “son” Grappa spoke of. “The stars are beautiful, aren't they? Even in the far east, we revere their shining light.” She then sings a calm elfaivaran song about the stars and the guidance they provide at night while moving in Borne's direction. The colossus seems to hear her song and so he turns his head in her direction, looking at her with a good amount of curiosity. He then tries to pick her up with his large hand, but Auryn realizes that this giant of a child doesn't know the full extend of his strength and so she dodges him. “Careful, big boy. Tiny people like me are quit fragile and you don't want to crush me.” Borne obviously doesn't seem to understand Auryn's words, so he continues his attempts to catch her. We realize that this is bad news indeed as the colossus might cause massive destruction should he get the idea that the city down there might be a more interesting playground. As he's more then 100 meters high, Borne could easily crush whole buildings with a stomp of his foot. We also spot one cavity inside his chest that appears to be fitting for the Wayfarer's Lantern but cannot grasp what the Obs would want to do with that as the golem is very obviously immune to magic. We quickly decide that the officials need to know about this threat to the whole city, so Auryn asks Carlyle to head to the Aurum immediately and warn the king. As Borne seems to react to her, she'll try to keep him on her track even if this game will be pretty exhausting. She also asks Margit and Flying Spark to get Grappa's head and care for those who might be buried in the collapse. Carlyle is a bit reluctant to leave Auryn, but he realizes that he's the only one who may reach the King in time and Auryn is the best bet when it comes to keeping Borne occupied. So he teleports in front of the Aurum and makes haste to reach King Aodhan. The latter just appears to have finished a long talk with the Danorans and so he's at first quite irritated when Carlyle warns him of an impeding catastrophe and proposes to evacuate the whole city. Carlyle then leads him outside to show him the towering giant atop Cauldron Hill and Aodhan turns pale. “As I said: If that giant decides to come down here, our city is doomed. We need to evacuate everyone immediately. This is a force no one can dare to control.” Aodhan takes a moment to sort his thoughts, then turns to Harkover Lee and nods. “There may be a way to deal with him. An ancient ritual to banish him to the Dreaming. But it will need some time to be set up. And we need to bring him to the sea. By the way... where is your partner? I hope she's alright.” Carlyle turns a bit nervous and then responds that his partner's whereabouts and bringing Borne to the sea might just go hand in hand as the colossus is currently chasing her and she's trying to keep him from moving down to the crowded districts. Aodhan seems relieved at this information and he then immediately orders his staff to bring the Danoran delegation to safety as dead diplomats is the last thing he wants. Carlyle takes this as an opportunity to help explain the danger to the Danorans. He then gestures at Lya and asks her to have a few words in private. Carlyle points at the colossus who's now heading for what appears to be the Nettles and tells her that this is what the Obscurati were hiding in their complex in Cauldron Hill. It appears that their project is finished now, but something went wrong and now this monster is threatening to destroy a whole city. He asks her to think about her allegiance to this organization and to ask herself whether this can truly be the work of philanthropists. Lya appears to be shocked about this development and hints that there is much she'll have to think about. Lastly, she also asks about Auryn and Carlyle, again, explains that she's the one who's trying to lead the giant away from the city. [COLOR="#008000"](at this point we started making jokes about the Benny Hill theme as everyone imagined Auryn running away from Borne making use of all her crazy ideas. Carlyle's player always got his tablet ready so he played it at least one time :) )[/COLOR] Meanwhile, Auryn does her best to lead Borne towards the areas of Cloudwood and the Nettles that are only sparely inhabited. The boy also seems to have a short attention span as he's easily distracted by larger trees or buildings. This gives her some time to breathe, but she also has to work a bit to get his attention back. During her chase, she runs across Dame Jillian who helps her out with a flying spell just when Borne is about to run into a smaller community. She's able to get his attention back before he can cause much destruction, but she also has to witness how the colossus tramples over Mayor Doyle Idylls, leaving only a smashed puddle behind. After a while, Carlyle returns and tells her about the plan of the King. After a while, Borne comes across a field full of flowers and he seems mesmerized for a while. We use this opportunity to call upon our connection to Srasama to send a message to the Old Stag: We tell him that a colossal, invulnerable, metal child has escaped the Bleak Gate complex and threatens to trample all of Flint under his feet. We explain that we'll try to lure him to the sea near Cloudwood, as he somehow reacts to Auryn or her songs, so the Bay area will be spared. He returns that he'll rally his crews to get the ships ready as soon as possible. [COLOR="#008000"](Leaving this as a cliffhanger as this session really ended at this point. Phew, what a day. So it turns out Margit's divinations were spot on. And yeah, we didn't regret bringing Grappa with us, even if this guy is still strange and we don't fully trust him yet. He got a good heart, but he's far too chaotic to be really reliable. Not necessarily in terms of alignment though - both our characters are derivatives of neutral good themselves but with strong outliers in certain aspects. Also, the colossus... I remember making theories about the "true patriot conspirators" building a walking Coaltongue back in adventure 2. I even sent Tiz this video about the spirit vine giant mech from Legend of Korra as an example: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwMUtHzHBdo[/url] And Borne is even bigger and less... controlable. He fortunately doesn't have a giant magic cannon mounted on top of him. Carlyle also did his best to convince Lya that the Obscurati are dangerous and not as honorable as she may have thought. I thought his last-minute intervention was pretty genius and it surely helped getting Lya a bit more sympathetic in the next chapter. For Auryn and Borne... we'll see more about her relation towards the "big boy" in the next session. For now, she's trying to chase him through the woods.)[/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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