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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3892801" data-attributes="member: 1210">Hey Tony, glad you're enjoying it. And I'm glad you get the Gamma World vibe- that's kind of part of what I was going for, only with magic. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Anyway, here's an update.***The weird, eyeless flying monster collapses to the ground, defeated. Our heroes check themselves over; no one is badly wounded, though its sonic attack did hurt Benito a little. But with the combined power of our heroes, Sir Porthos, Benito and Adelle- plus the villagers, who are desperate enough to fight some of the time- even a powerful single creature is quickly overwhelmed. “Having these guys along might really help after all,” Goer remarks.“I think we need to be careful,” Kyle urges. “We don’t want to change time or anything. What if taking these guys to our time prevents them from doing something important back, uh, now?”Lord Cedric snorts. “Nonthenthe! If we leave them here, they will die.”“Yes, my lord,” Kyle murmurs, bowing his head. Adelle watches closely. She is smart, and though she doesn’t speak Kamendan, she clearly is learning a word or two. Kyle feels a moment of guilt, but he just doesn’t want anything terrible to go wrong.All around the party, the ruins and piles of pulverized rubble are dismal reminders that they are in a war zone. Even if the war is over, this city shows no signs of recovery; in fact, our heroes have yet to see a single living soul. It is a sobering thought.“Hey, look!” Sir Jorgen points ahead. Strange dark metal tracks are recessed into the ground, running parallel to each other and about 10’ apart from each other. These weird tracks run mostly straight, but curve to enter a nearby ruined, but very distinctive, large building, with wide eaves and many pillars but a ceiling with many gaps in it.  In the other direction, the tracks run straight into a massive crater about a hundred feet away, where they have been mangled and twisted.“Tracks!” exclaims Benito. “Now we just have to follow them.”“Huh?” asks Jorgen.“Those are the tracks that the shadow train runs on,” Benito explains.The ruined building still has a partially intact embarkation platform, with a set of tracks running through it. Rather than having any interior walls, the ceiling is held up by a series of massive pillars. On the opposite side of the platform, the party spies another set of tracks (the route running the opposite direction, according to Adelle).  A cursory search turns up a strange map on the wall. Adelle explains that it was a route map- “These are- well, probably were, really- five different transportation routes indicated by color, so the red, orange, yellow, blue and black lines each represent one route. Here, where they all converge near the center of the city, is the main hub. I would bet that that is where Harth went.”“Then it ith to there that we thall go ath well!” Lord Cedric cries, taking a swig from his bottle of whiskey and mussing the hair of Bates (one of the villagers, a lad of 14 years).The party continues on. They pass up smoking buildings after their experience with the library. Now and again, they hear movement in the rubble; rats and ghouls seem to be the only survivors of the city- or at least, the only survivors willing to show themselves.For an hour and more the group walks through the broken capitol. They must step carefully to avoid turning their ankles, or their horses’, and this slows their progress; but they know that they have gained a great deal on Sir Harth and his evil cult. Or is it the beholder and his minions? Who is really in charge there? wonder our heroes. Is Harth the beholder’s lackey, or is the beholder somehow serving Sir Harth? Does it even matter?Sheriff Jorgen thinks, We must bring Sir Harth to justice.Suddenly, three figures round the corner ahead and come into view. They are skeletons of metal, gleaming mechanical monsters with long blades coming from the ends of their hands. Immediately, the war machines move towards the party, closing the distance rapidly.“Oh crap!” cries Sheriff Jorgen, and raises and fires his crossbow. The bolt penetrates the metal creature’s steel skin, sticking into it! Kyle dives for cover, attempting to hide behind the sheriff. Dahlia casts heat metal on all three of them, and they start to smolder. Me pulls his magical mace and rushes to meet the war machines, and Lord Cedric lowers his lance and spurs Thunderpuss forward with a rousing (and drunken) cry.Battle! The clang of steel on steel as the party and the machines throw themselves into the dance, cutting, crushing, slicing, stabbing. An ear goes flying through the air as one of the war machines slices it from Sir Colder’s head. Otis screams, “Get back!!” as he sees his magic missiles resisted harmlessly by the constructs. Even Kyle joins the melee, casting magic weapon on his blade. The war machines are fairly tough and fairly hard to hurt with direct magical assaults. The battle is not an easy one. The war machines are quick, deadly accurate and very hard to destroy. But, one by one, our heroes hack them down. The battle is far from one-sided, for most of our heroes suffer at least a wound or two, and Sir Porthos is knocked cold and nearly slain. At the battle’s conclusion, he is stable but unconscious, with a broken jaw.“Those things are tough!” exclaims Kyle. He shakes his head. “I don’t know if we can take a large group of them, if we encounter one.”“We may have to,” Benito tells him grimly. “If there are any large units of them left, they are probably near strategic areas- like the Shadow Road Terminal.”“Well, what we really need to do is rest,” opines Goer. “We’re wounded, and I bet you guys are getting low on spells.” Several of the spellcasters nod. “Let’s look for a secure place to rest while we travel,” Otis says.***On through the ruin, through the smell of death, beneath that tainted maroon sky. Over pulverized buildings, along or through craters, between ragged buildings scorched by fire our heroes walk. The scavenging ghouls, and here and there, rats, are the only inhabitants that the party sees. As they move down the road, they come upon a very sturdy-looking building of strange white material, similar to the walls of the nearly-abandoned village that they found previously. Though damaged by fire and impact, the building is intact.“What is this stuff?” inquires Otis. “We saw it back around your village, as well.”“It is called plastic,” Adelle replies. “It has very interesting and useful properties. And there are many types of it.”“Hmm,” muses Otis. Yet another wonder of the ancients that we have lost. There is so much that we can learn from this journey, if only we can make it home! And if only there were a way to record the secrets of this era and bring them home with us...The party moves up to the building and enters. It is some kind of armory- but it is not unguarded. Four mechanical hounds, similar to the ones that the party fought in the village, spring forth. To the party’s dismay, Mang Trolak, the half-orc villager, is torn to pieces almost immediately!“No!” cries Benito. “Mang!” Otis and Adelle both blast the gear hounds with fireballs, and Kyle follows this up with a magic missile spell. One of the hounds drops! Then the rest of the party rushes forward into melee as best they can- though Sir Fwaigo ends up blocked off. Cursing, he yells at Lord Cedric to get out of the way, but Cedric is busy hacking one of the hounds into pieces. “Two down!” he cries triumphantly.Meanwhile, Dahlia casts heat metal, followed by call lightning. As her first lightning bolt cracks down and blasts one of the remaining gear hounds to bits, the other one collapses, giving off smoke and a weird burning smell.Mang Trolak is clearly dead. The party gathers the pieces of her body and everyone heads outside. Benito, Adelle and the other villagers weep for her. Then, they set about digging a grave and planting her body into it while the adventurers keep a wary eye out for trouble. The maroon sky overhead is the color of a young scab. As the only priest present, Lord Cedric says a few words and performs a funeral ceremony; then she is buried .“Should we go back into that building?” asks Dahlia. “There might be more trouble in there; I saw several doors.”“It’s a distraction,” Otis declares. “We should keep going.”“We do need to find a place to rest,” Sir Colder points out.“We should find a place that’s less likely to have trouble inside of it,” says Kyle.They keep moving. Past a series of buildings that smell of vinegar, past a hugely burning factory that covers nearly a block. “I thought I saw something moving in the flames,” Sir Jorgen muses.“Surely,” Otis says eloquently, “it is not something that will help us find Harth.”They continue their journey. Wounds itch and throb. Porthos moans in his unconscious state. Bates, the lad, stays close to Lord Cedric, who leads from the rear. Benito’s electric ranseur is in his hands. The stink of rotting corpses gets even stronger as they head deeper into the destroyed city.Suddenly a haggard figure clad in rags stumbles out of a nearby alley. Everyone’s weapons are drawn in a second, but the old man makes no hostile moves. Instead, crying, he stumbles towards them. “Please,” he cries in Palantian, which some but not all of the party understands. “Have some wine. Have a cup of wine...” He breaks down, sobbing. “I’m sorry!” he cries. Somewhat dumbfounded, our heroes hesitate- and suddenly a fireball explodes around them, killing both the man and Angora, the village sheriff. “No!!” howls Sheriff Jorgen. A cloaked figure steps out from an alley. Our heroes gasp as it casts back its cowl. A gleaming white skull is revealed, but in its eyes are large gems. One of them smokes and hisses. The other one-Next Time: The other eye!</blockquote>

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