ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

The morning of the 10th of spring saw Manuel and El Kevin following crates along the canal network and detecting for Bleak gate energy , they were able to locate a crate and track it as it transferred to the Bleak gate making a note of the arcane symbols on it. They were certain that without some final step in the process the crate should have returned to the real world within ten minutes they consider using these crates as an emergency method for getting to the bleak gate with the uncertainty of what they would need to do to maintian their location.
Ulvaar and Padme case the Hotel Kell in Parity gate for an assault later in the day while their constables hit a selection of hideouts in expensive and bloody assaults. Meanwhile Nevla and Asraby try to track down Gale they also take a pair of remove curse scrolls secured from Harkover Lee and use one of them to remove the curse on the cloudwoods. Meeting with Gale they rapidly realise she is compromised and has made a deal with they fey she cannot easily break. They learn useful information from her on what Ekosigan is up to notably that his ritual involves mass murder of orphans, Manuel had been keen on cooperation until that point came out . After managing to leave without pushing Gale to the point where she would have to attack Nevla and Asraby talked, Nevla told him that they thought Kasavarina was in the Bleak gate at the Ob facility, Asraby was interested and asked her as a favour to keep him up to date on everything they found out about this, in return for the favour he mentioned he had noticed the constables were having problems with the strong holds of the Kell organisation and he offerred to go and deal with the tower, she agreed and shortly afterwards that afternoon the tower burnt down and everyone inside it was killed as they tried to stop an Eladrin dreadnought who had taken precuations against gunfire after his previous experiences.
Meanwhile the B- team spent the morning following up leads on the eschatologists and traced the journalist who was missing an invite to the train station opening they correctly deduced this would be the target for the bomb given it's convenient location to blow up the peace summit. They added ambush terrorists to their to do list.
In the afternoon while the kell guild people at the tower were being slaughted the Kell mansion was hit by half a dozen soldiers and the A-Team and taken down another half dozen soldiers and the police officers hit an illegal deal and busted them. SHorty afterwards they recieved an invite to meet with Morgan Cipriano they appreciated the fine shoe's.

The A-Team also did some research into orphanages and found one which looked perrfect for the hideout of Ekosigan and added raiding it to their to do list. While meeting with Morgan they listened to his requests and overall considered them reasonable though Manuel also pushed for a crown amnesty for Kell guild members who came forward to provide an alternative for the night of long knives. It was agreed that the sculptor would never come back to Risur and the king would enforce that. Morgan arranged for them to meet his man, they spoke and arranged an ambush by this point they realised their list of raids and ambushes was getting rather full so the B-Team then added to it...

The B-team escorted Brakken and colleagues to the nightclub and were shocked to discover the great Rock Rackhus was performing, it was decided that pretty much any annoyingly catchy pop tune ever invented was in his repertoire. One of the team noticed the presence of Kell's lawyer Augst and was close enough to overhear his arguement with 'Norm' as a result 2 of them trailed him back to his house and set up surveillance particularly after Brakken's warning that Norm was planning to kill Augst. No one thought it odd that in the noisy night club Brakken had overhead something when their team members who were closer had heard nothing. They increase the ovenight suveillance by bringing in Manuel and El Kevin leavingtwo of B Team (the alchemist and the gunslinger , and the A-Teams Alchemist and Gunslinger) watching Augst while the rest of the A and B Teams went to ambush the arriving Eschatlogist ship of monsters. The surveillance team saw and identified the opera tickets and added staking out the opera house to their job list. The ship of monsters arrives next session their schedule is
Night of the 11th Opera House
Midafternoon on the 11th Kill Ekosigan
3am on the 12th Ambush Kell
Later on the morning of the 12th Kill eschatologists
Then ASAP Storm the Bleak gate

Any further investigations which turn up will need a C-Team

In which the Starscream hypothesis emerges.
We start off with the team looking for eschatologists smuggling monsters in a pair of customs cutters, unfortunatly they also remembered the navy being on full alert and patrolling off the coast so they arrange to have a couple of warships in their general area for support. Nevla being aided by Ulvaar's lightning weasel spots(I can only assume it aids perception by stopping her getting too relaxed with small electric shocks) the approaching smuggler ship, they are pretty certain it must be a smuggler ship when they realise it has a magical darkness shroud. The smugglers and the cutters exchange a few salvo's before one of the ships of the line comes into range and blows the smuggler out of the water with heavy broadsides and magic.
The team then prepares to kill Ekosigan, while they do this the B-team has an uneventful tour of the cloudwoods although they do encounter an Albino Cow. The main team approaches the Gallo school for boys , Manuel casts spider climb and blending and as a near invisible creature climbs up the tree's at the same time the main body heads up the staircase, Manuel spots gremlins waiting for them and sends a warning, El Kevin leaps around the corner pistols pointed at them and nothing happens, Nevla and Ulvaar rush past him as Manuel aims a rifle shot at the gremlins. El Kevin holsters his revolvers and nearly shoots his feet off as the guns go off, Nevla and Ulvaar drop the gremlins and suddenly Manuels Rifle fires no longer blocked by the gremlin he just misses his allies. More gremlins swarm forward and are dropped by Nevla channelling energy from the gyre . The party moves forwards stealthily with Manuel emulating the night as he creeps through the trees around the edge of the clearing they spot Gale hanging out on the roof of the Headmasters office, and shushing them. Nevla creeps forward and uses the remove curse scroll on Gale freeing her of Ekosigans control. Gale flies out of the way of the fight standing by to feather fall anyone who falls off the tree's. Ekosigan senses a disturbance and come out he makes his speech and then gets attacked he gets stabbed by Nevla, then confuses El Kevin who spends the rest of the fight bashing himself in the face with a revolver everyone is glad no bard is present in all previous campaigns Gun + Confusion = crit to nearest allied bard and their deaths. Manuel fires at Ekosigan and is upset to see he has shot Nevla with an explosive alchemical round, he is glad he was not using the Nock gun. Padme and Ulvaar also stab Ekosigan, a leopard starts licking Nevla in a freindly fashion or at least this is the only explanation I have come up with for its failure to hurt her at all in the next 3 rounds, the other leopard charges Manuel and hurts him lots he declares he wishes he had a steam suit.
Nevla stabs Ekosigan again he breathes ice over everyone except Manuel and The ground near Manuel starts to glow. Manuel climbs under the treehouse so he cannot be eaten by the snow leopard. Padme and Ulvaar lay the hurt on Ekosigan who does not appreciate being flanked by a rogue.
Nevla curses Ekosigan who teleports over to where Manuel was, Manuel takes a healing potion and casts shield Ekosigan fails to do anything else because he is cursed. Ulvaar and Padme charge him and land a pair of blows which are enough to kill him.
Padme has a vision of a giant bird emerging from cauldron hill and we have a starscream revelation. Nevla and Manuels players simultanously decide the vision involves a giant mecha which can transform into a bird emerging from the hill which must be the Ob plot, as all transforming flying mecha are Starscream they conclude that Grappa must have sabotaged it by turning its treachery setting up to 12, they also conclude the forest rather than city in the vision means the mecha will be unleashed directly into the dreaming.
With Ekosigan down Asreby departs informing the team he will see the king to seek permission to join them in going into the bleak gate to find Kasavarina, the team actually think this is a good idea as he is rather useful in a fight. In fact they regret that Ekosigan was a crazy fae they would have liked him and a bunch of gremlins to screw up the guns of the Ob.
The operation at the Opera house goes well as Norm is spotted going into his box, they ambush him a silence scroll is used in the corridor and Manuel sets up a Nock gun in the area of effect on a tripod. The door is opened and Norm is cursed, hold personed and vital striked for 14d6 none lethal from the Nock gun, he has a terrible day and is unconcious. Harkover carries out the interrogation and the team has a wand they are now certain I think to go through the bridges to get to the bleak gate but conclude they can't go until the terrorists and Kell are out of the way
With time short they make plans to deal with the eschatologists , they settle for an ambush in the train tunnels probably with an invisble Manuel and El Kevin to take out the bomb handlers before they can start arming the bomb, probably the combined A +B Teams with a few cops as back up . Nevla realises that as long as one of the terrorists is a woman she can track them when they get within a mile of the station.

Starscream is a better idea than what we actually went with.

We have now passed 40+ emails discussing various ways of disarming/safely disposing of the eschatologists bomb. I am now afraid to let the pc's kill the terrorists before they have a chance to arm the bomb.

Revised Plan with Airbubble and a few estimates on bomb effects.
Ulvar TK's the bomb into the painting. Manuel / El Kevin time check this on a Chronometer, I think we have 26 minutes from activation. We should aim to have the bomb diffused or ditched at 15- 20 minutes.
Padme & Manuel attempt to diffuse the bomb in the painting. Ulvarr tags along for heavy lifting. El Kevin is along for later spellcasting
Meanwhile Gale flies it out to sea for 15 minutes. Depend on Gales flight granting method some people may accompany her outside the painting.
At the safe distance if we haven't diffused it , Ulvar moves the bomb out with telekinesis, and El Kevin casts, Airbubble and Featherfall on it. Dropping it from 1800ft would give us 3 minuites of flying away time, and hopefully leave the bomb at least 2 minutes of sinking time (it should stops featherfalling when it reaches the water surface). Which should leave us almost 1 mile out from the explosion at the 5 minute mark if we factor in the height. Extra time can let us get further. The bomb hits the water at 60ft/rnd or 10ft/s or 7mph which is a pretty low speed. Dependant on Buoyancy and weight the bomb should sink at 10 - 20ft/s giving us 1200 - 2400ft of depth in 2 minutes (its unlikely we will get more than this as we are in coastal waters). Airbubble should hopefully stop any crush problems, and the rate change from featherfall to sinking is similar, so that should hopefully minimise any jarring. We could also attach a large streamlined cone weight to the bottom to stop swaying. 2000ft of water is a fantastic firebucket. The explosion was described as principally fire, ice & acid components, with less blast than a normal explosive. So this should dissipate well under a large body of water.
If we can't get to a safe distance and we think it will detonate we bail from the painting in a row boat (with featherfall) (previously stashed in the painting), and let the painting blow up / destroy the painting to lose the bomb.
Any further input or is this our plan? it uses existing resources & mundane items (row boat, weights, marine chronometer for timing) + air-bubble (1st level wizard) & featherfall (1st level wizard) spells which would be fine cast at 3rd level (El Kevin) only.

After all their planning the succeeded too well and stopped the bomb going off.
However El Kevin wants to try to get advanced hand grenades based off the Bomb, Manuel wants to maybe mass produce them at a higher level so he wants everything documented and would like a giant none lethal version. Nevla talked them out of taking the bomb into the Bleak Gate in case of feedback to the real world when they blow something up, Manuel when reminded of this possibilty agreed and he and Nevla.
the last email I got was
Manuel will have drawn up a program of study for careful in place study and documentation of the bomb, with reference to long term stability. Based on this he will then either advocate building and testing a second bomb. To confirm we can replicate it and to study it in detonation. Or a detonation of the original to study its effects if we think it will go unstable. Either way this appears to be a useful technology that should be added to our military capabilities. As a conscientious modern goblin, who has repeated been referred to the university ethics committee, Manuel thinks this needs strong treaties curtailing its use on civillian targets, and normal battlefields, so he would like to mainly use it on Fae titans, Zombie hordes and dimensional breaches. He would also like to build a knockout only version to really deal with petty street crime on mass.

It turns out my group really like big bombs who would have guessed!

In less interesting events they opened up with catching Lorcan Kell . They had Harkover prepare the bridge with a dimensional anchor and retrieved the Ob Drill bomb launchers used against them, they prepared the bridge with chains across it which were pulled taught as the carriage passed trapping it between 2 chains then El Kevin launched a drill bomb at the carriage to force Kell out. Kell and his bodyguards rushed out and where cut to pieces his cleric went down in the first round before she could get a spell off as El Kevin and Padme gunned her down while she counted as flat footed. Lorcan and his other bodyguard tried to grapple pc's to use as human shields but both rolled 1's and as a result when down to a series of stabbings and shootings , Lorcan was unconcious and taken away for interrogation although the team had already got pretty much everything they needed by this point but it was nice to get confirmation , he will be hanged once the Ob are dealt with.
The A Team then joined the B team in ambushing the eschatologists reinforced by Gale for whom they have procured a royal pardon, based on most of her crimes actually being commited by Kell and by her agreement to help dispose of the bomb she also paid compensation for her crimes in recovered treasure . Nevla tracked the approaching terrorists as some were female and her sword told her where they are, then the ambush was sprung.
The advance guard of terrorists not near the bomb where slaughtered by the B-Teams Alchemist, Gale (who pulling out all the stops killed 11 terrorists with one lightning blast the pc's were glad to have avoided fighting her at any point), Manuel and the B-Team gunslinger. El Kevin gunned down three terrorists holding the bomb and the last terrorist and the rearguard went down as the melee armed pc's charged forward under haste. A few scatterred survivors lasted into round 2. The boss went down so fast I lost track of who killed him.
They immediatly placed the bomb in the painting with a disposal team and Gale started to fly to safety until they confirmed the bomb was not armed.

They then rested preparing to go to the Bleak Gate at night however they were diverted by diplomacy. The tailors ruthlessly prevented them from arming themselves to the diplomatic events. Ulvaar wore military uniform, Padme, Manuel and El Kevin took business suits while Nevla went for a traditional Elfaivar dress.
On the coach they talked to Lya and listened to her story and could not decide how much was lies and how much was Lya not knowing all that the Ob was up to , they confirmed she had rings on but could think of no way to check them. Overall they thought she was sincere about peace but they consider that the Ob is a strange organisation which seems to vary between ruthless violence and high minded ideals, they suspect the ruthlessness represents the real leaders attitudes. The dinner went well they approved off the Danoran minister of war as she seemed refreshingly honest if hostile, El Kevin babbled to Brekkan about the Ob causing a belated ring check and they decided a nose ring probably did not count!
Nevla politely pointed out Danor's problem with enslaved Eladrin and believed Lya when she said she personally would happily kill or imprison any Danoran caught is such vile acts. They also managed a reference to hoping that the 'chance for peace would not be obscured by secret actions' and tried to spot the poker faces of the Danoran delegation and failed.
Asraby's arrival did not suprise them and they were pleasantly surprised that the hotel was not on fire, clearly he was being polite. They spotted that the King was not refusing his request merely complaining about the timing and noticed Brakken reacting to what was going on. As the King and Harkover moved them in for a private conference Nevla delayed to speak to Brakken who told her he was a telepath and had read Hans surface thoughts she immediatly rushed him into the conference. Brakken explained what he had got from Han and Lya , the constables decided they would intercept the message and then hit the Bleak gate immediately before any more warning could be passed which will be next session

Remembered what happened to the Dwarf antipaladin he got a Nock gun in the face from Manuel , this time not set to stun

A nonlethal doomsday bomb, eh? I'm sure that'll be popular with the public.

Poor Kell going down before he got to gouge anyone's eyes out.

We thought he would have been smaller than that.

He is why Adamantine is rare, they must have been saving up all the adamantine since the ancients

We were not expecting Geography

The team started off preparing for their incursion into the Bleak gate they decided to deploy the B-Team to stop Han's messenger while they went in, they decided to take Grappa for advice and to not try and stop Asraby coming they deployed soldiers but kept them in reserve. Their plan was that Manuel and El Kevin would go through first and stealthily deploy to deal with the guards as the main body came through, then messengers would come through these would not be fixed in the Bleak gate with the wands allowing them to go back and fetch the soldiers if the team felt this was a time for soldiers.
Manuel and El Kevin shot the guards from ambush and allowed Asraby to deal with the Trolls under the bridge. Manuel and his player loved the fact they had trolls under the bridge and began looking around for any goats. With their arrival still being secret they left the army behind and headed for the complex discussions with Grappa revealed both the entrances and the fact he had wiped Kasavarina's memories. There was a pause as they waited to see if Asraby was going to smash Grappa into tiny pieces. Then they talked through it and decided that probably meant Kasavarina was going to be a confused neutral and probably would not even recognise Asraby. Getting back to the entrances they initially favoured the lake entrance but realised they had no boat and any boat they could carry to the lake would not hold Manuels steam suit. The front doors they ruled out as they could see no way to get in without a battle so they went for the air vents in a traditional move.
They stealthily reached the top of the hill managing to avoid the dark creepers and the ambush party , with mutually awful perception and good stealth at the top they looked at the five vents and by sheer chance chose the one leading down to the living quarters of the senior people. Nevla protected everyone from fire and then Padme and Asraby climbed down before El Kevin brought everyone else who had crap climb skills down with feather fall. They sneaked into the Kitchen, Grappa warned them about the guardroom and told them they would see what all this was about if they moved through there.
Here they overestimated the elite guards firing from under a silence spell Manuel doing subdual damage with a vital striked nock gun killed one of them while the other 3 went down to a hail of attacks in the suprise round.
Moving to the exit they were very impressed and the intrusion bogged down in a good solid round of speculation about why they were building such a big golem and expressions of appreciation about it's size. They players had been expecting something live a 60 foot golem/Starscream not this. They spotted it was meant to have a lantern installed and decided it must be being made to fight an extra planar opponent overall they dismissed it being built to beat up they Fey as they could not think of anyone with that big a grudge against them. They then started to think perhaps 'Nicodemus' was an ancient or a Ghidim and had been planning this for thousands of years (hence the shortage of Adamantium) and that the collossus was being built to punch extra dimensional invaders in the nose when they next turned up. This fits with their theory that something involving planar travel/collapse of the ancient ritual/ the stars are right is coming and their conflicted position that they wish they knew what the Ob was up to so they could assess it's methods. Grappa mentioned Tinker as the designer and Manuel wanted to meet him.
Then the watching steelshaper intervened he was standing on a platform atop the shoulders of Borne along with a drugged Kasavarina and a pair of elite guards who the players ignored. He threatened the players briefly as Colin, Linus and Hunter arrived on the lift along with Creed reborn as a negative energy being and kinetecist. Grappa identified the golems and was certain he could talk them down while he did so Manuel engaged them in a philosphical debate about the sentience of Constructs while deploying his heavy shield and all protective measures, this lead to the golems at penalties engaging Manuel , while the team focused on Creed as he was inflicting lots of pain, Asraby went off to rescue Kasavarina and kill the steelshaper.
Creed took a hammering and the final magically enhanced blow from Nevla knocked him off the platform to plummet to his uncertain fate, which was nice he will return probably in part 7 as the steelshapers butler or maybe head butler at the symposium. This annoyed the steelshaper who had yet to have an Asraby in the face so he decided to crush the party by curling the platform they were on into a ball, this worried them and at his point Kasavarina noticed who Nevla looked like and realised she faced death calling out Daala she unloaded a pair of chain lightning spells into the steelshaper which hurt him badly completely annihlated the poor guards and arced into Borne's head waking the collossus. As it stirred the maimed steelshaper plummeted into the abyss along with Kasavarina, Asraby leapt grabbed her and then portalled them both into the dreaming. As Borne lurched into motion the team retreated from the debris back into the VIP quarters unfortunately losing Grappa to the depths but saving the three golems.
They watched Borne lurch out to the surface and I showed them the front cover they remained impressed by his scale and really glad the area was already largely evacuated, they met with Major Dale who was busy trying to arrest the other refugee's from the complex and agreed he should get them into custody and clear of the hill and under no circumstances attack the giant golem which matched his plans. Gale arrived followed by Roger and they decided Gale should fly Nevla to the king to sort out the response, Manuel would take roger and start to gather all the fireworks a crazed goblin could want from the planned celebrations as they wanted something big to draw the golems attention , meanwhile the rest would stay on site and keep things under observation.

We have one more session in this campaign arc then over to Star Wars for while. However they are agreed this is one of if not the best written adventure paths they have come across and as most of us have been gaming for at around 30 years that's a lot. They will enjoy returning and hope to find out what the Ob are actually up to

Manuel's player has been working on some estimates about Borne

Honestly a 500' tall artifact adamantine golem is more than most D&D societies ever achieve, the ob should probably just stop now.

Ballparking some math:

Adamatine weighs 1000lb per cubic foot (steel is ~490lb per cubic foot) and adamatine is about twice the weight)
1lb of Adamantine is 500gp
A 6ft man has about 2.5 cubic toot of volume
Bourne is 500ft or 83x larger going with the cube rule of increase gives him a volume of about 1.4 million cubic foot.
Assuming about 25% of that is adamantine, and the rest is engineering space or lighter components, bourne is 178,683 tons and has 1.7 *10^11 gp or 0.17 trillion gp of adamantine.

Finding a 45ft radius adamantine sphere somewhere (presumably some god lost a bowling ball) would be the easiest way of getting hold of this in a world without planar travel. Although I'm suspecting the OB are running the Drow (possibly via the boy scouts of america) and have been taxing a millennia worth of Adamatine mining for this.

Either way something to aspire to for any 20th level wizard with downtime.

Also if we survive we should mine cauldron hill for their adamantine stock piles, they probable have a few million there in spare parts and us gun bunnies need our adamantine bullet