ZEITGEIST BSI: Bosum Strand Irregulars

[skotothalamos]

Working on the Railroad

In the morning, IronPeak and Kenna went for a run to the nearby military base. While there, Kenna took IronPeak to the firing range and taught her some bullet-dodging techniques. The others, minus Colleen, made their way to a teleportation circle, where Xambria and Cazara had prepared a ritual to take them to Citado Cavallo, near the border with Risur. They sent Colleen ahead to Reo Pedresco to begin sorting out the rail construction task.

At Citado Cavallo, the constables were tasked with getting the old orc leader, Cavallo de Guerra, to pay his share of a rail line connecting the city with the capital. The Danorans were tasked with getting Cavallo to attack the Risuri town of Manhill across the bay. Such a move would undoubtedly undermine Cavallo’s credibility, allowing him to be replaced. Either way, the Bruse was going to get something he wanted.

At the gate of Cavallo’s citadel, an angry orc shouted down from the battlements, demanding to now what the group wanted. When they shouted back that they were here to see Cavallo de Guerra, the orc shouted back that he was Cavallo de Guerra and he would not be talking to any two-faced lackeys of the Bruse who were only here to trick him into paying for things he didn’t need. He told them to go back where they came from. Cazara shouted back, telling him that they were only working for the Bruse under duress, and were not interested in perpetuating the Bruse’s stupid way of running government. Cazara yelled that they could work together to “get the BS out of the Beran court.” A female Goliath advisor conferred with Cavallo and he relented. The gate was opened and the constables were shown to quarters near those occupied by Lya Jierre, who arrived ahead of them. Cavallo would meet with them all over dinner at mid-day to discuss business.

Alienor took the opportunity to wander the citadel, gathering rumors and information about the town. She heard some gossip about an embarrassing ailment affecting one of Cavallo’s grandchildren. She also heard that the ancient hoard of the dragon tyrant Furioso had finally been found. By draining the nearby caldera lake and many other lakes, Cavallo’s people had been forced to run off a local band of belligerent goblins to get the work done, but they had finally found the treasure of the long-dead dragon. In fact, the great pile of gold was currently occupying the greater part of Cavallo’s dining hall, so dinner would be served in the courtyard instead.

At the mid-day meal, Cavallo and his many advisors, family members, and assorted hangers-on took up their usual positions at his great table. The constables and Lya Jierre were seated near Cavallo so he could hear their petitions. IronPeak had arrived by now, and she spotted an adolescent orc boy being helped in to the courtyard by his mother. The boy’s leg was bandaged and had the characteristic splint of one afflicted by Dragonworms, a painful invasive parasite endemic to the wilds of Ber. Dragonworm was not usually found in cities, and especially not amongst the ruling class. Cavallo waved them away, and the boy’s mother hurried him out of the courtyard before he could cause embarrassment.

There were many negotiations between the three parties over a traditional orcish feast of many varieties of barely-cooked meats. The only utensils available were knives of various sizes, and it wasn’t completely clear if they were meant for transporting the food or defending it from your neighbor. After much conversation, during which Cavallo clearly favored Cazara and the other constables — dismissing most of Lya’s arguments out of hand — an agreement had been reached. The constables would remove the goblin threat to show that they could be trusted and so that Cavallo would owe them a favor. Then, he would do them the favor of doing what they wanted, in exchange for the blessing of the Risuri archfey of the sea, Beshela.

The goblins, of course, had left their traditional homeland, an no one knew where they were based, but one of Cavallo’s orcservants produced a letter from a foreign doctor who claimed to have been kidnapped by the goblins while working to treat their various ailments. In the letter, he gave directions to the goblin caves, and so the constables headed off an a good old-fashioned dungeon expedition.

After traveling for the better part of a day, aided by Cazara and Xambria’s travel rituals, the constables arrived in a strangely-familiar box canyon with a multitude of caves scattered around the walls. They were met by the leader of the tribe, a shaman named Willegu with a giant ant head on the end of his staff. The head twitched slightly, and giant ants could be seen peering out of the many caves. The constables told Willegu that they were here on behalf of Cavallo to try to get them to stop raiding, and to negotiate a peace. Willegu told the constables that they would stop raiding when the orcs let them back onto their ancestral lands. The constables also asked after the foreign doctor and the goblins produced their “pet monkey,” whom some of the constables recognized as Dr. Wolfgang von Recklinghausen.

Cazara said that the constables were empowered by Cavallo to grant them their land back, now that Cavallo had finished his project in the area. Willegu wasn’t going for it. He said he knew how Cavallo worked, and Cavallo would never offer up anything without getting something in return; in fact, usually he needed to owe the person a favor of some kind. Some other goblins had gathered to see what all the shouting was about (Willegu was just shouting at the group from the end of the canyon). IronPeak noticed that, unlike most Beran goblin tribes, these goblins were almost completely unaffected by Dragonworm. She asked about this, and Willegu said that his pet monkey was a very good healer who had cured them of the ailment. IronPeak told him about Cavallo’s grandson, and told Willegu that if he gave Cavallo the means to cure the boy, he would owe Willegu a huge favor. Willegu agreed, but said he did not trust the constables, so one of them would have to stay in the doctor’s place until Cavallo kept up his end of the bargain. IronPeak volunteered for that duty. It was late in the day, so the goblins invited the group to stay the night, which they accepted. The goblins offered them raw giant ant eggs for dinner, and provided them with a dirt-floored room with no furniture for sleeping. The giant ants skittered through occasionally on whatever business ants have, but it was a reasonably quiet night.

Cazara took the opportunity to ask von Recklinghausen about his creation, “Mister Mapple.” The doctor hung his head as he talked about his greatest failure, but he gave an ironic smile and told the tale of how the original Mister Mapple had been the head of his household staff, and the first man killed by the monster who was now using his name. Doctor von Recklinghausen told the group that his creation had murdered his wife and most of his household. Wolfgang had only barely escaped himself, and had fled the country, hoping to disappear in Ber, doing charitable work to atone for his sins. His flight had, of course, been tied up at the Danoran Consulate, but they knew that story already. Cazara told Wolfgang that his “monster” seemed like a good person when the constables had met him, and neither of them talked about the subject any more after that.

In the morning, IronPeak stayed with the goblins while the others returned to Citado Cavallo and took care of all the logistics needed to heal Cavallo’s grandson, draft a writ for the goblins to return home, and make a sending to get the king to make the proper supplications to Beshela. This took the better part of the day, and when they were finished, the constables thanked Cavallo for his help and teleported to Reo Pedresco to catch up with Colleen. IronPeak would catch up whenever she was released by the goblins.

In Reo Pedresco, they found their partner for the construction project, a lizardman named Surtan Liss. Liss had just come from an unsuccessful meeting with industrialist Benedict Pemberton, who was offering up a “steam crew” for an exorbitant price which Liss could not afford. The crew consisted of ten steam-powered men, similar in design to Colleen, but specialized for rail construction. Colleen was currently supervising the crew out at the far end of the rail line. Liss could not afford the price Pemberton was asking, but asked if the constables could negotiate on his behalf. They agreed.

Pemberton was very polite with them, though he had the air of a man who is used to getting his way based on his reputation but who was also trapped in a conversation with children who have no idea who he is. He told the constables that his crew was on loan for the rest of the day, and that if terms were not agreed upon, he would offer it to their opponent. The constables were unable to find a financial arrangement that Pemberton liked, but they did impress him enough that he decided to loan the crew to Liss Rail Construction for the duration of the project in exchange for the RHC granting James M. Chinast a one-month leave of absence to come work with him. Pemberton was clearly impressed with James’s mechanical hat, arm, and leg, and would clearly be looking to hire James away from the RHC in the future.

With the deal arranged, the constables felt successful and headed to their hotel for the night, where they were met by IronPeak, who had all sorts of interesting news. First off, she informed them that Benedict Pemberton was the number one financial contributor to the Royal Homeland Constabulary. In fact, she guessed that a good portion of their quarterly disbursement budget was due to his generous donations. Secondly, and more importantly, Lya Jierre had succeeded in Citado Cavallo. One of the sea chiefs had launched an independent a raid on Manhill and was spouting paranoid ravings about the Risuri fleet invading any minute now. A purple-skinned tiefling woman had been seen in the area of the sea chief’s estate the day before the attack was launched. The orc had been stripped of his position by Cavallo, but the damage was done. He was livid that the Bruse had sent people to him to undermine his credibility, and he was not likely to follow through with the rail funding that the constables had worked so hard to secure.

But that was a problem for another time; they had weeks of rail construction to oversee in an effort to win this challenge. Cazara and Xambria used rituals to help clear land and lower water for bridge construction. The rest helped in more mundane ways and railroad was proceeding at a good pace. Cazara even managed to get Rock Rackus (a charter investor in Griento Railways) to visit the Griento operation, which was great for worker morale, but awful for productivity. After a fortnight of rail work, just when everything was seeming routine, a scout reported seeing an army of undead marching toward the rail camp…

 

[skotothalamos]

Army of Darkness

IronPeak had been warned that the dragon tyrant Cheshimox had controlled this area many centuries ago. He had brought over a glacier from Drakr and enchanted the desert to support his preferred habitat. When the local lizardfolk had proved themselves incompatible with the cold weather, Cheshimox killed them all and raised them as his undead followers. Though Cheshimox had died centuries ago, his followers carried on out of habit.

With the undead army closing on their position, the constables gathered as many of the rail guards as they could and formed up a ragtag defensive line against their advance. James, Summer, and Xambria crafted an Undead Ward ritual for their “soldiers” to line up behind. Cazara sent Xambria to ritually reinforce the rails against sabotage while everyone was distracted by this strange attack.

Alienor lined up shot after shot with her long-range rifled musket with its telescopic sight, but it seemed that more than half of the enemies that she shot just got back up again. She retreated to the battle line and waited for the approach. Through her “scope” she had seen that they were mostly undead lizardfolk who seemed to be led by a foursome of lizardfolk priests riding a sled made from a massive dragon skull, The sled itself was drawn by ghostly beasts and was projecting an icy environment around itself, ensuring that its runners always had snow or ice to run on.

The constables struggled to keep their guard in order as the undead approached. Alienor opened up the fighting with some explosive shells from her rifle. Entire squads of zombified lizardfolk fell under her fire, but then just pulled themselves back together and kept on marching. The lizard priests led the way, blasting the constables’ battle line with icy breath from the dragon skull, dropping dozens of guards at once. Summer, James, and Colleen all set to healing those who could be helped. The priests’ own attack spells dispersed harmlessly at the barrier James and the others had crafted. One of them decided Alienor was too much of a problem and closed her off behind a forty-foot-tall wall of ice.

A pair of shadowy assassins fell on the healers, somehow having gotten behind the rail guards’ battle line. They managed to keep most of the constables and rail guard occupied long enough for the rest of the undead army to cross the distance to the ward. James warned that — since the skull of the dragon could shoot through the ward — if the sled broke the line, the entire spell would probably be broken. The troops would be well advised to engage the undead before that happened.

And so Colleen and IronPeak led their troops into the enemy formations. IronPeak manifested artillery shells from out of nowhere, blasting the lizardzombies to pieces. Alienor managed to phase through her icy prison and continued to hold down an entire flank by herself with exploding bullets. The sled went out of control and ended up blasting its own troops instead of the rail guards.

After that, there was just a little bit of mopping up to do. The Keepers of Cheshimox had gone on one final, glorious ride to honor their fallen dragon lord, and in the end they were destroyed. As the constables and their guards cleaned up the battlefield, they could not shake the feeling that the Keepers of Cheshimox were happy with this result.

 

[skotothalamos]

Keepers of Cheshimox, artist's impression (by IronPeak's player)

http://36.media.tumblr.com/842ca648229e0aa889d17fb1db419882/tumblr_nmf708qsko1r7sdgpo1_1280.jpg

 

[skotothalamos]

And the Winner is...

After fending off the last gasp of a long-dead civilization, the constables got back to the task of finishing the railroad that would modernize transport in Ber. Another week or so, and they had finished, making it to the goal a day ahead of Griento Railways. Rock Rackus, an initial investor in Griento’s business, spent the better part of a month keeping an eye on his investment (and distracting the workers enough to slow their production). There was a brief ceremony when the two railroads met. Griento and Liss jointly drove in a final golden spike, and the Constables teleported back to the Summer Court, where they would find out who had won the right to speak with Tinker Oddcog.

At the Summer Court, the group was told that the winner of the competition would be announced at an evening meeting with the Bruse and his advisors. It was going to be a grand affair, with any petitioners who had passed the Adulthood Challenge allowed to come and enjoy the food and festivities of court. That left James out, so he spent his time doing maintenance.

The meeting was held in the Bruse Shantus’s audience chamber above the labyrinth where the Adulthood Challenge had been held. On either side of the room were raised galleries for the spectators to watch the proceedings. At the far end of the room form the entrance was another raised platform for the Bruse and his advisors. Behind this area were large windows and doors leading to a balcony overlooking the labyrinth. The floor of the room was where the petitioners were gathered. There was a cocktail hour before the main event, with hors d’oeuvres and beverages available for all attendees. IronPeak noticed that Kenna seemed distant and distracted, and was not nearly as interested in the food as she usually was.

Zarkava called the meeting to order. The Bruse stood with Kenna and Zarkava at his side. Pardo skulked in a back corner of the advisor platform, looking surly, but no more than usual. The constables stood to one side of the floor, while the Lya and her two bodyguards stood to the other side. The Bruse announced that the Risuri group won the railroad challenge, and the Danoran group had won the Cavallo challenge. Zarkava announced her vote for the constables, while the Bruse voted for Lya’s team. That left Kenna Vigilante to reveal her vote. She called the whole thing ridiculous, said that Tinker should just come here and decide for himself, and abstained from the voting, leaving the contest deadlocked at two votes a side.

Tinker was already on his way to greet the winners; now he would just arrive and let the two sides plead their respective cases. Or, so went the plan. The gnome was brought in by a military escort, who spread out to strategic locations around the room, guarding doors and obvious trafficways.

Tinker eyed the assembled groups and said, “Everyone wants to talk to me; how exciting! Well, all I see is Obscurati, Obscurati, and more Obscurati.” He pointed at Lya, Summer, and Colleen in succession. “How typical of the Obscurati to fight against itself for someone who wants nothing to do with them any more. Make a big show for the Bruse, and no matter who wins, you get what you want. Well, I want you all to leave me alone. Leave! Now!” He pulled out a pocket watch. “You have exactly 16 seconds! 15… 14… 13…12…”

“He’s a bomb,” shouted Cazara. “Get out!”

Summer ran for the platform where the Bruse and his advisors stood. The guard by the stairs swiped at her with his bayonet as she ran by. Cazara saw that and just vaulted directly onto the stage, and opened one of the doors to the balcony. She waved frantically for the dignitaries to follow.

The guards, for their part, mostly moved to block the doors and keep anyone from escaping, though a few set upon the Bruse, stabbing him with their bayonets.

Alienor, never one to pass up a golden opportunity, pulled out her rifle amongst the chaos and shot Lya Jierre multiple times, but Jierre just spat fire back at her, barely even staggered from all the bullets. IronPeak tried to break through the line of guards at the doors to allow the others to escape, but she made no progress.

Lya drew her sword and marched straight for Alienor. Activating the chain filament around her sword blade, Lya tried to slice Alienor’s custom rifle in half. Alienor moved quickly and managed to pull her gun out of the way. In so doing, she exposed her arm instead, and Lya’s chainsword went right through flesh and bone, severing Alienor’s right arm just below the shoulder. Merton tried to follow, but his feet were tangled by a magical spider web from one of Alienor’s bullets.

Glaucia Evora was in one of the viewing galleries. She pounced on the single guard who had blocked the door, trying to tear her way through him and allow the crowd to make a run for it.

Kenna Vigilante calmly looked to the Bruse, under attack from his own guards, and she began to strangle him, throwing him to the ground. Bruse Shantus gasped and cast about for an ally to help him. No one volunteered.

Colleen shouted for IronPeak to get those doors open, and IronPeak obliged by manifesting an artillery barrage out of the ceiling, blasting the guards and destroying the doors they protected, as well as large chunks of wall and floor. The civilians were able to start filing out through the holes in the wall.

Lya’s other bodyguard Rush Munchhausen found himself tangles up in the same webbing as his counterpart, but he managed to extricate himself, accompanied by some truly vile language about Alienor’s entire family line. He deployed his paired Immovable Rods and dashed across the battlefield, kicking Alienor while she was down.

Tinker opened a panel on his chest and pulled out a comical black bomb, complete with a burning fuse. Eyeing his watch, he continued to count down. “11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…”

Rock Rackus had showed up for the event (or at least for the drinks) and now he was trying to figure out how to escape. He gathered the other spectators on his side of the room, telling them that he had a way out, but they would need to gather close.

Pardo, Minister of Rebellion, member of the Cult of the Steel Lord, and all-around disgusting gnoll, stepped over to the fallen Bruse. “Steel endures,” he said. “Flesh rots.” He cast a spell rotting Bruse Shantus’s skin away, then he set upon the minotaur and bit him on the neck. As he pulled back from the neck wound, he seemed to be sucking out a glowing willowy substance. A necromancer would have recognized as a soul-eating spell.

Seeing your king’s soul being eaten right in front of you will shake you, even if you didn’t like him that much. Zarkava dashed for the balcony as fast as she could, hoping Cazara had a plan besides standing on the balcony when the gnome exploded.

When spending their requisitions before the excursion to Ber, Cazara had been very adamant that everyone needed a Guardian’s Whistle, which is enchanted to teleport a willing subject to your side, helping them escape a sticky situation. Summer made it to the balcony and blew hers, pulling Alienor away from the killing blow surely coming from Lya Jierre any second now. Summer used some magic to stop the bleeding from Alienor’s missing limb, and then she dashed right off the balcony, letting her Ring of Feather Fall do its work.

Cazara pulled out a feather and spoke to it. “I’m going to need some help evacuating Alienor.” Alienor looked confused and kept asking what the feather was for. Cazara told her to not worry about such things and blew her whistle, pulling IronPeak out onto the balcony. Cazara told Alienor to save Rock Rackus with her whistle, which she did.

Just as Gale was floating down from the roof of the building to collect Alienor, Colleen decided to tackle Tinker. If he was a bomb, she was going to either smother the blast or set it off before Lya Jierre could get away. The blast obliterated the room, including Colleen, many of the civilians that Rock had gathered, and Lya’s bodyguard Merton. Pardo, Kenna, and the guards survived the blast, though the skin over the metal skeletons was mostly torn away, revealing them to be machines.

As the balcony collapsed, Cazara and Zarkava were able to arrest their falls with magic. Rock disappeared in a puff of flower petals and leaves, while Alienor and IronPeak fell. Gale swooped in like a superhero to catch them both. IronPeak thanked her, but Alienor had been knocked unconscious by the blast and would have no memory of being saved (again) from a collapsing building by her former lover.

As they flew up over the building, IronPeak saw the arc of an incoming artillery shell. The area filled with Agony Gas, and all of the non-machine people were forced to flee.

Actual soldiers from the nearby military base showed up to face the machine people, and after a while they were defeated for the most part. Pardo escaped. The machine that wore Kenna’s face came crawling out of the rubble towards IronPeak, asking for help. With half of Kenna’s face, and half a steel skull, the machine told IronPeak that she could hear gnolls and the other prisoners, and they needed to be rescued. Then the machine collapsed, and the remaining part of its face turned from an imitation of Kenna to a generic, mannequin-like face.

The Cult of the Steel Lord, in association with Tinker Oddcog, had infiltrated the Beran military with mechanical replacements for actual people and then assassinated the Bruse. To what end? These were questions for the following day. For now, Zarkava was acting Bruse, and she almost immediately stepped down and named Cavallo de Guerra as her successor.

Cavallo was informed of what happened, and was brought in to lead the country. For more than four decades, de Guerra had not found a problem that could not be solved with lots of ships filled with angry orcs. When the arcanists traced Tinker back to Isla dola Focas, an island of the coast of Ber, Bruse Cavallo’s first official action was to declare war on the Cult of the Steel Lord and begin plans for an invasion of Isla dola Focas.

The constables were asked if they would like to assist, and they volunteered to go in ahead of the main force in an effort to rescue hostages.

 

[skotothalamos]

Welcome to My Volcano Lair

The surviving constables requisitioned a fishing boat and a squad of a dozen Beran soldiers. Their combined force would land on Isla dola Focas ahead of the invasion, and see if they could free the military hostages from the Cult of the Steel Lord before the Beran fleet arrived. James did a divination spell to track down Kenna’s whereabouts, using an old survey map of the island. She appeared to be inside a dormant volcano about five miles inland from the coastal city of Karch, home to some ten thousand gnolls.

Summer did a ritual to make their entire group appear to be gnolls for a few hours; hopefully long enough to reach their destination. They timed their approach to Karch to blend in with the other fishing boats from the city. As they approached the island, Summer felt attention drawn to the massive storm cloud stretching the entire distance between Isla dola Focas and the mainland.

Looking up, she felt herself overcome by a vision. She was floating in space, two hundred years prior, next to the constellation Draco and above the planet Avilona. Avilona, the plane of air, was balanced on a pin of white stone. Dense, swift clouds covered its face, and where they parted she could se glimpses of majestic towers. She felt as though she were being battered by waves, and the white pin shattered. Its head plunged into a hungry black gyre below and, with no noise, no grand cataclysm, the clouds of Avilona slowed, thinned, and vanished. She saw ruined spires falling to its surface. To her side, the stars of Draco plummeted into the vortex below and she was falling as well, with no wind to hold her aloft any more.

Summer told this story to Cazara and all they could talk about for the rest of the ride was how the Golden Icon of Avilona had been found in a sea cave on Axis Island, held in a broken column of stone which had eroded away and broken. Cazara recalled that Nicolas Dupiers, the miner they encountered in that sea cave had two other Golden Icons (of Urim and Nem) on him. She wondered if the other planets all had icons held in stone columns around Axis Island. The time information seemed significant as well: the vision had been of two hundred years in the past. It was around 200 years ago that the dragon tyrants suddenly fell out of power in Ber, overthrown and killed by their slaves. It was about 200 years ago that Danor first started waging war on Risur over control of the Yerasol Archipelago, which included Axis Island.

Was Axis Island so named because it was the axis of the world, or the solar system, or even the universe? If a pillar holding an enchanted icon related to a planet breaks and that planet loses its influence over the world, did one cause the other? Was Axis Island somehow projecting its influence over the planes to the rest of the world? Was it creating the reality they all lived in? The Golden Icons lost their power away from Axis Island, so was something on Axis Island giving them power, or was their power magnified by it? There were many things to investigate, but for now, they had an island to infiltrate.

They made landfall and skulked through the rough terrain of the island, heading towards the volcano. After an hour in the wilderness, they found a wide, well-used dirt road leading directly to the entrance of the place they were looking for. The road led to three large entrances into the mountain. One of the entrances had a pair of large mine carts at the end of a track. Investigating the mine carts, the constables found the disembodied head of a duplicant. Alienor picked it up and it became the head of Tinker Oddcog.

“I wondered when I’d see you again. Please, please, get in the cart. It will be a pleasant ride, and my subterranean domicile is far, far too large for you to have to walk all the way. So, so vast. You could get lost in it. Certainly your mind could. I have an inkling you’re going to get quite violent toward me, and our previous interaction was much, much too brief. So please, please: into the cart.”

When the constables protested that it was Tinker who had escalated the hostilities in their previous interaction, he claimed that he was under mind control — a mind control that he himself had designed, in fact — and it was a strange sensation. He also told them that they were walking into a trap but was suddenly cut off when the head changed to the face of Benedict Pemberton.

Pemberton had first been encountered a year prior, when Malkie and Mort had been unable to gain access to his exclusive party tent at the Kaybeau Arms & Technology Expo. Since then, they had little contact with him until coming to Ber, where he traded the use of a “steam crew” for the promise of James’s future services. James was a pioneer in the realm of personal prosthetics, and Pemberton wanted to make use of those talents. After that meeting, IronPeak had revealed to the others that Pemberton was a very generous contributor to the RHC’s coffers, and in fact their regular stipends for gear and expenses were mostly funded by the Pemberton Trust. Now, he was appearing before them, seemingly affiliated with the Cult of the Steel Lord, who had just assassinated the leader of Ber.

“Welcome to my volcano lair,” began Pemberton. “Now if y’all don’t mind, kindly either leave the premises or leave your weapons behind and get in the cart so we can talk in peace.” While Alienor negotiated an agreement that would see the constables and their soldiers enter the mine carts without leaving their weapons behind, Cazara made three quick Sendings to people who she thought needed to know about Pemberton:

“Have reached Pemberton’s volcano lair on Focas. Assuredly a trap, but hostages need rescuing. Mind control a risk. Please ready any help you can offer.”

She sent that message to Bruse Cavallo, RHC Chief Inspector Delft, and Principal Minister Harkover Lee.

Delft’s response: “Don’t die.”

Cavallo’s response: “Will send troops to back you up ASAP. Advance scouts in area. Will be available within an hour. Good luck!”

Lee’s response was longer in coming. Unable to delay any further, the constables got in the lead cart, with their guards following behind. The Pemberton head began to lobby for their support in his upcoming revolution. He argued that the high-turnover of short-lived leaders led to chaos and strife. Why, Flint, the most successful city in Risur, had had the same mayor for hundreds of years. Pemberton argued that what Ber needed was a leader with some experience, a leader with the lifespan to see things through. As he was working up to his conclusion, Cazara got her message from Lee: “I wish you’d told me earlier that Pemberton was involved. Be very careful with him. He used to be the dragon Gradiax the Steel Lord.”

“He’s a dragon,” said Cazara. “Do you think I want a dragon in control of my country again?” and then she punted his head out of the mine cart. The negotiations were over.

The carts pulled into a huge foundry room filled with open lava pits, conveyer belts, cat walks, a big steam turbine, bizarre mechanical contraptions, an obvious mine-cart-themed trap, some kind of big laser pointing into the lava, and a large steam-powered mechanical suit. Everyone leapt from the mine carts before they could be dumped into the lava. “Welcome,” said a mechanical reproduction of Pemberton’s voice, “I guess it’s time for hostilities. Tinker, be a good gnome and take out the trash.” As the steam suit charged various weapons systems, the voice came back in. “Except the human. We need him alive.”

The steam suit launched bullets and bombs faster than anything Alienor had ever conceived. Alienor dashed into a side chamber, where she found a strange display of four un-activated duplicants sitting around a table, looking like four mannequins having a discussion. The table looked like a zeppelin, and the room was filled with other, equally silly contraptions piled at the end of the conveyor belt coming in from the foundry.

Summer went invisible, Cazara leapt across the chamber and also went invisible, James rocketed into the air powered by his rocket boots, and the troops advanced on the steam suit and fired their carbines. Summer checked her sword to try and get a better lead on where Kenna and any other female hostages might be. She picked up a female presence hiding in the steam cloud above the giant turbine.
Cazara approached the obvious Important Door in the area the Tinkersuit was trying to guard. She opened it and looked inside, where she saw Benedict Pemberton and Tinker in an office/control room of sorts. Dozens of automated displays showed the status of various systems around the volcano complex. Tinker lay on a bed, in a trance or coma of some kind, and Pemberton watched over him. Pemberton gave a look toward the door when it opened, but the TInker-controlled steamsuit waved its hand and the door shut of its own accord. Luckily, Cazara had backed out of the way in time and was just outside the office, not having been seen by Pemberton before her potion wore off and she became visible again.

When she became visible, a new combatant joined the fight. On one leathery red wing and one mechanical wing, a dragon swooped down, crashing into Cazara with all its might. It chomped down on her and shook her like a rag doll. Cazara squirmed free, drank another invisibility potion, and then phased through the wall into the control room, while also manifesting the sound of herself running off in a different direction to fool the dragon. This prompted the dragon to activate its eye, made from enchanted ruby, that broke all illusions and invisibility around her, revealing Summer trying to figure out the controls to the giant laser nearby.
The dragon charged Summer, striking her with the steam-powered fist at the end of her prosthetic foreleg, sending Summer flying across the platform.

Cazara could see Pemberton talking into the end of a mechanical stick. His voice was projected to the outer chamber. “Now, you be careful out there, Tera.” After a pause, he continued. “Ain’t she a marvel, y’all? first of her kind in near two hundred years.”

Summer blinked the Tinkersuit into the Dreaming, breaking the real Tinker’s connection to it. Cazara saw the real Tinker suddenly awake with a start. Pemberton pushed him back down onto the bed, pulled out a knife and held it to the gnome’s throat. “Whoever’s in here,” he said, “y’all might want to be real careful, now.”

Tera leapt off the platform and plucked James off of his perch, flying away into the upper reaches of the room.

Alienor emerged from her search of Tinker’s various projects with a grenade launcher. She fired it at the escaping dragon but did not bring her down. In fact, the blast were probably more dangerous to her hostage than to her.

Cazara had had quite enough and she telepathically asked Tinker if he could go invisible or teleport or something. At first he said he couldn’t, but as he got his bearing, he said, yes, he definitely could, and he immediately did. And so Cazara shot Pemberton in the face, becoming visible as she did. His head half shattered because of course he was just another duplicant. Unlike other destroyed duplicants, however, Pemberton did not revert to a neutral form. He kept his shape.

Cazara and Tinker quickly made their peace. Tinker said he’d be glad to help Risur fight the Obscurati, and he had tons of ideas about how to stop Borne, and he hoped that he’d be allowed to explore some of his exciting technological ideas for the benefit of Risur, but first he just needed to grab his urn from under the bed. Cazara said that was fine.

Out in the foundry, the others were making peace with Tera, who told her story. Her egg had been kept by the Cult of the Steel Lord as a holy relic of their god-tyrant Gradiax. When Pemberton returned some years ago, he enlisted the most expensive mages in the world to figure out how to incubate a 200-year-old dragon egg. And so, seven years ago, she was born, but with some missing bits. Her left foreleg, wing, and eye were all missing and had been replaced with various enchanted and technological items. She was really looking forward to seeing what James could do for her and she didn’t see any reason for them to be fighting.

The constables promised to keep her safe and let James work on new, less-warlike prosthetics. She said she wouldn’t go with them, but would instead go to a secret place her father had told her to go. She consented to having James join her for the better part of her journey, so he could work on her limbs.
Tinker mentioned that he had recently heard from Alexander Grappa, and that the old Mindmaker had somehow transferred his consciousness to Leone Quital, the Steelshaper, and was hiding in the back of his mind, only able to take control when Quital slept.

TInker also told the constables everything he could remember about Borne: what his weak points were, how he had been designed to feel pain, the various environments he was designed to withstand, and many more details. The main gist seemed to be that it was designed to lift over 40,000 tons at once, survive at deep ocean pressures, and operate without any connection to other planes. Also, it had a small hollow in its chest, about the size of a pumpkin, that had a fuel line running to it. Tinker didn’t know the purpose of the pumpkin-hollow.

The constables brought Tinker home to Risur, having secured Ber as a solid ally in the war against Danor, and having gained a new leg up in the technological race that was coming.

 

[skotothalamos]

History Lesson

The constables returned home to Risur after a long journey that had seen them help the Children of Hewanharimau overthrow a Crisillyiri colony, secure an artifact that held the key to Summer’s past, sow dissent in a Danoran colony, complete a transcontinental railroad, become witnesses to a coup in Ber, and meet the first dragon anyone had seen in two hundred years. It was an eventful trip.

On the way back, Cazara, who had tucked Pemberton’s robot head into her Gloves of Storing, contacted Harkover Lee to have him take possession of the strange artifact. He teleported to their ship. When Cazara produced the head from the extradimensional space inside her gloves, it still held the likeness of Benedict Pemberton. The constables demanded to know why they hadn’t been told that their primary financial benefactor was a dragon. Lee responded that such secrets were on a “need to know” basis, and they did not need to know until they were actually attacking his Volcano Lair. Had anyone suspected what Pemberton was up to in Ber, they certainly would have been warned. Upon trying to hand over the head, Pemberton’s eyes opened and he said, “y’all better run, I’m a bomb!” When no one responded, he simply disconnected his consciousness from the head and it reverted to a neutral form.

Cazara handed it over to Harkover, hoping there would be some way to use it to track Pemberton to his actual lair. Then the conversation turned to Pemberton’s daughter and whether Risur should take custody of her. Cazar asked Lee, “Do you suppose a dragon could ever be raised to serve the people instead of dominating them?” Lee responded that many things were possible, but it would be unwise to anger such a potentially powerful creature by taking her in against her wishes. Hopefully James would be a more positive influence on her life than her father. Lee thanked them for everything, and then teleported back to Slate.

The return to Flint was less eventful at first. Alienor put a plan into motion to remove her daughter from Danor and shelter her with the Cloudwood Skyseers. IronPeak went to visit her friend TitanFist, whose mysterious connection to IronPeak remains a mystery. Cazara wanted to go and visit with Duchess Ethelyn in Shale, with was convenient because Summer had some memories in Risur that she wanted to track down, and one of them seemed to be in Shale. They collected IronPeak and Alienor and headed out.

In Shale, the Arc of Reida drew Summer to a house, where a caretaker told them to come back the following day. When they did, the caretaker allowed them entrance under the condition that she could observe the phenomenon. The world shifted and suddenly it was eleven years earlier. in 490, Kasvarina was coming to visit the owner of the house, and Eladrin woman named Chatwood. As they sat for tea, Kasvarina demanded that Chatwood undertake a secret mission to accompany the Duchess Ethelyn and serve as her Skyseer. Chatwood was to serve Ethelyn faithfully except where Axis Island was concerned. Any visions about Axis Island were to be kept secret, and in fact Chatwood was to encourage Ethelyn and Risur to give up Axis Island to the Danorans without a fight.

Chatwood said she would go along, but only if she knew why, hinting that she wanted more information about Kasvarina’s secret society. Kasvarina told her that she would only be told what she needed to know. Chatwood was adamant; she would not do any more secret missions unless she knew the truth behind them. After too many refusals, Kasvarina made up her mind: this agent was no longer useful. Unable to bring herself to kill an Eladrin woman, she instead permanently blinded her and drove her insane, causing her to be locked away in the Shale Sanatorium for the past decade. When the memory faded, the caretaker pointedly asked the party to leave.

After a brief visit with Chatwood in the Sanatorium during which nothing useful was gained, the constables visited the former Duchess Ethelyn in the Bridge Tower. She welcomed them to her prison as old friends, with tea and cakes. Cazara asked if Ethelyn knew Kasvarina, but she said she did not. They asked about Skyseers who had been perhaps skittish about Axis Island, and the Duchess mentioned that her “handmaiden” Sokana had joined her about a dozen years prior and done exactly that. The constables were learning that Kasvarina always won, one way or another.

Upon their return to Flint, Summer felt a pull toward both the Navras Opera House and the old Obscurati facility in Cauldron Hill. She opted for the opera. At the Opera House, they were preparing for a play called Cauldron of Blood, about the struggle between King Lorcan Finn and the Red Contessa of Cauldron Hill a century prior. On Mondays, the opera was closed, and the constables were able to start the memory sequence without disrupting the opera’s business too much.

The rooftop tore away and they were pulled three hundred years into the past. Kasvarina walked with her friend Navras and asked him why he would build this wonder so far away from home, so far away from Elfaivar. Navras told her that he needed to go some place that had a clean energy and was uncorrupted by Kasvarina’s world view. He told her that she had corrupted his vision and created too many problems for the project he was trying to complete now. Only in a fresh environment like Risur could the Dirge of Vekesh be properly delivered any more; the “Vekeshi” Mystics had twisted the message beyond notice. Kasvarina asked if she could come to see Navras’s first performance and he threatened to have security ban her from the building.

The memory faded and the constables found themselves floating in a memory that was not Summer’s. The memory-capturing abilities of the Opera House seemed to have combined strangely with the memory-reliving abilities of the Arc of Reida, and they found themselves as floating invisible spectators on Navras’s first and only performance of the Dirge of Vekesh in his opera house. Cazara noted as an aside to Summer that clearly Kasvarina respected this man; when had she ever asked permission to do anything?

The Dirge was delivered in Elvish, but the magical properties of the Navras Opera House allowed each listener to fully understand not only the words, but their deeper context. Navras played a simple Eladrin guitar and sang alone. The Dirge followed the typical style of an Eladrin elegy: three verses; one each for the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aspects of Srasama. In the first verse, he sang of the Maiden’s joy and wonder. In the second verse, he sang of the Mother’s comfort and strife. For the third verse, when he should have sung of the crone’s burden of loss and death, he instead stayed silent and simply played the notes on his guitar. Navras then repeated the first two verses, with a slightly adjusted tone to indicate that he is mourning not the death of his nation, but of Srasama. in the final verse, the song comes to its point: it is only a mourning song if it ends in death. The Eladrin people are not defeated as long as they refuse to go with the crone into the afterlife. There is a plea for the listeners to seek retribution, but to not throw themselves to their deaths. No Eladrin man should sacrifice himself for revenge when there are still Eladrin women who need to be returned home safely. They should grieve, grow strong, and rebuild from weakness to prosper with strength.

When he finished, the room was filled with a memorable and life-affirming sorrow. The crowd cried, the singer cried, even the memory-ghosts cried. Before they could really take in what they had witnessed, the constables were whisked off to another memory captured in the walls of the opera house.

It was the year 401, a hundred years prior to their actual time frame, and they felt themselves inhabiting the various historical figures represented in the Cauldron of Blood play. IronPeak was drawn into the role of King Lorcan Finn, who was to face the Witches of Cauldron Hill this very night; his presumed successor, the knight Melissa Gahlot was to be played this night by Cazara; Harkover Lee, just as healthy as ever, was inhabited by Summer; and Alienor felt herself drawn into the personality of another noble Tiefling gunslinger, Amielle Latimer. Harkover Lee, King Lorcan, and Dame Melissa were meeting with the mayor of Flint, Roland Stanfield. Amielle had not yet arrived.

The four Risuri discussed their plans for the night. The witches of Cauldron Hill needed to be overthrown, and tonight there was an eclipse of the moon. There was some debate over whether this was a good omen or ill, but the Skyseer who was supposed to give them answers was running late. As they discussed how to deal with this, a Danoran ship sailed into the harbor under a flag of peace. Perhaps the hated enemy had some advice? They went outside and were met by a steam-powered runabout carrying Amielle Latimer. She said her “astrologers” had specific information about the eclipse of the moon and that according to them, tonight was the best time to strike, before the eclipse if possible.

Just then, the chief of police rushed up and told the gathering that Rebecca Lang, the Skyseer, had been spotted in the small nearby town of Parity Lake, being chased out onto the lake by a mob of commoners who were accusing her of being a witch.

The mayor argued that Lang could take care of herself and that they should just get up the mountain ASAP, but the king overruled him and the group mounted horses bound for Parity Lake. On the way, they were met by a hooded figure who stopped the procession to stab himself in the throat. As his blood gushed to the ground, it coalesced into the figure of the Red Contessa, leader of the Witches of Cauldron Hill. She told the gathered crowd (for many had gathered to watch the king pass) that she was their queen and they were her subjects. She told them that she was a far better monarch than King Lorcan, even though she’d been boiling their children alive for thirty years. She wanted an end to the hostilities; all they had to do was accept her as their queen and there would be no more hostage-takings. She claimed she already had more than she could use and waved her hand toward the mountain where dozens of fires began, apparently each one with a hostage inside. She claimed that she could solve the country’s problems, unlike King Lorcan, who let enemies into his harbor, and rode beside them like friends. She would take care of their enemies, she said, and with a wave of her hand the Danoran ship in the harbor exploded and she collapsed back into a puddle of blood.

The group redoubled their efforts to save Skyseer Lang. They found an unruly mob being goaded on by the beadle of North Shore, Husky Pete. Pete was up on a soapbox by the shore of the quaint fishing lake, inciting the others to violence. People were lighting pitch-soaked arrows and launching them toward a raft in the middle of the lake that assumedly held Rachel Lang and her fellow skyseers. Dame Melissa rode straight toward Pete as he was shouting “The witches are everywhere. They are among you. There are witches on the mountain. There are witches in the lake!” Melissa told Pete he could tell no lies, and through sheer force of will she made him turn his story in mid-pitch. “The witches are everywhere. I’m a witch, in fact, and you are all being controlled by me. There are witches on the mountain. There are witches in the lake!”

With spell of “Husky Pete” somewhat broken by the half-elf paladin, he transformed into a witchier countenance. Sister Deliria forced Melissa to attack Amielle. When Amielle shot the witch, the now-scattering crowd winced in pain all at once. Harkover Lee detected that she had some kind of magical connection to the crowd, and he broke her spell, allowing the witch to be taken down quickly. As she died, a black spirit flew out of her, cackling its way back up the mountain, and cursing them all.

The Skyseers thanked the king and mayor for saving them, and then Rachel offered up her vision to the king: “When the moon is near setting, and the glow of dawn waits to appear, the cauldron is unguarded, the coven exhausted and sleeping after their night of revelry. And a figure steps willingly into the boil and the bubble. The fire turns to ice, the cascade stops, the blood fades away. And then the sun rises, the witches turn to stone, and the mountain is purified.”

Now there was a decision to be made. The Danorans said to attack before the eclipse; the Risuri skyseers said to wait until dawn. Which should they do? King Lorcan made his decision. He would sacrifice himself heroically at dawn to crush the witches and cleanse the mountain, but first he would make sure that Dame Melissa fought against them heroically and survived, so that he could name her his successor before he went to his death.

Melissa and Amielle led a force of a hundred troops up the mountain. After losing nearly three-quarters of their number to some dark spirits, they were reinforced by another group of a hundred. They fought some witches and zombies and evil spirits at the pyres where the hostages were being burned. They freed thirty hostages and sent them back down the mountain with an escort of six of their most wounded soldiers. They arrived at the peak of the mountain after the lunar eclipse had begun, and from their perspective the moon was pouring blood over the whole mountain. They fought valiantly against the wtiches and their hundreds of minions, but in the end were forced to retreat from the battle. No more than half a dozen soldiers made it back down the mountain with Amielle and Melissa barely surviving.

Confident that Melissa had established her bond with the people, King Lorcan led the way back up the mountain before dawn. As the sun was just about to rise, he and Mayor Stanfield and Harkover Lee arrived at the summit. It was sticky with blood, but there were no witches to be seen. The witches’ black cauldron stood alone, slowly bubbling the blood inside. A few scattered revelers lay sleeping on the peak. Lorcan transferred his Rites of Rulership to Melissa and stepped willingly into the blood cauldron, sacrificing his soul to the Red Contessa and ensuring her rule over the city of Flint for a generation.

The witches of Cauldron Hill held sway over the city of Flint for many decades, until King Aodhan returned from the Third Yerasol War with a steamship capable of shelling the mount. Together with the powerful sorcery of Harkover Lee, they were able to break the witches’ hold over Flint and begin a new age of industrial revolution in the city. As the memory ended, the constables realized that it had always been this way, and any memories of a different history were quickly swept away.

As the memory faded, Alienor could feel that she had some kind of connection to Amielle Latimer. A blood connection perhaps? She was convinced that Amielle was her ancestor. As an orphan, this was amazing news for Alienor to find out. Unfortunately, she was too busy being drawn in to yet another strange event.

Somehow connected to Amielle Latimer’s consciousness, Alienor felt herself being pulled across the sea to an island off the coast of Crisillyir. It was modern day, and she was inhabiting the ghost of her ancestor as she watched a new crop of recruits coming in for their Obscurati orientation…

 

[skotothalamos]

I've, uh, got some historical rationalization to take care of now... shouldn't affect anything too major. I figure any delay in the Ob getting control of Cauldron Hill is countered by extra souls being poured into it by the witches.

 

[skotothalamos]

I just have to say: doing Diaspora basically scattered through the rest of Paragon Tier has worked better than I could have even hoped.

To wit:

Just after having her "go rescue your daughter from the dragon in Ber" memory, they got the mission from Delft/Lee to go find Tinker in Ber, so she could do the memory and all of Adventure 6.

At the end of Adventure 6, they've finally gotten enough visions and info to put together the importance of Axis Island (and, boy was it fun to watch them put the pillar/icon thing together). Someone asks, "When was the first Yerasol War?" Oh, uh right about then... So now they're thinking, yeah, the Ob wants Axis Island. The first memory after they get back to Risur: Kasvarina telling someone "Hey, make sure Axis Island falls to Danor."

It's just going so smoothly.

And, in 7, they'll get to chase Leone and catch up on Alais Primos and Drakr memories all at once. We'll see how that flows.

 

[RangerWickett]

It's so good I'm upset I didn't think of it myself.

It's great to hear how your game is going.

 

[hirou]

And that's why I'm dying to play Bonds of forced faith with my group, quite a bit of history can be rewritten And scattering Diaspora is indeed working great, I'll think about trying this without Kasvarina in my party