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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6254177" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 100bA squad of soldiers had accompanied the unit halfway up  Cauldron Hill.  They had followed Sevitar's directions and arrived some distance from where they hoped to find a hillside entrance into the Ob facility.  With them were Asrabey, the bronze golem, and Kvarti Gorbartiy. Korrigan handed out charm bags he had been given by Harkover Lee: made from fragments of the Risuri flag and filled with Risuri soil, they would spirit the owner back to Lanjyr if torn before daybreak.  Uru pointed out that if they did that inside the Ob complex, they would most likely find themselves shunted into solid rock. One of the soldiers held the wayfarer lantern as it was lit.  Everyone within its glow of bruised brownish light was now stood in both the Bleak Gate and Risur, but only the unit and their allies - with the appropriate runes stitched into their clothing -  would remain in the Gate when they left the lantern's radius.  Another soldier used the wand taken from Norm/Sylyx to fix the unit into the Bleak Gate permanently.  When the oil in the lantern ran out, the soldiers disappeared and the unit found themselves in a world of gloom.  Below them, in the distance, they could see the shapes of buildings in Flint that had stood long enough to develop a shadow in the Bleak Gate.  The skyline of the city was almost identical, though Hotel Aurum was not there, but the city was totally dark.  No lights at all, and no stars above them.  From far a way they could hear faint sounds, the thrum of machinery, and they could smell traces of witchoil. Communication with the canal force and with Uru would now be impossible until they entered the Bleak Gate too.  Just before the lamp faded they had received a report from Professor Ludo Marcione that the canal force had begun its journey along the canal.  Unit B, along with the ebullient Lt Dale and his handpicked squad of eighty men - half loaded onto two barges; half jogging alongside on either bank - moving steadily eastwards, passing beneath each rune-scribed bridge in turn. Shortly before they set off, Dale's men had caught the Danoran emissary sent to warn the Ob of their assault.  He bore a handwritten message which simply read: "Be warned: the Risuri crown intends to attack you. Make preparations as best you can."Under threat of death, the man had confessed that it was Luc Jierre who handed him the note.By now, still in the real world, Uru was already partway up the hill, avoiding the attentions of the spirits who haunted the slopes beyond the treeline (a treeline that was preternaturally low; nothing could find purchase in that foul and ravaged soil).  He too was following the directions given him by Sevitar, as well as his own rough memory of the fateful night when he had crossed into the Bleak Gate alone and sought to rescue lost spirits.  Then he had come across ventilation shafts - quite out of place in the featureless landscape, and he now intended to find one and gain access to the Ob facility, in the hopes of taking out the dire weaponry that Asrabey had reported: cannons that bombarded Ekossigan's fey army with shrapnel.  Finding the right spot was a bit like dowsing, he decided.  He kept going until he felt a tingle, then stopped. After a moment's pause, he took out the delicate gatecrasher charm - lost by an over-confident Lorcan Kell - and crushed it.  At once he was propelled from one world into another, in a violent surge of arcane power that winded him and knocked him off his feet. When he looked up, he found himself surrounded by fey: gremlins daubed with warpaint, their eyes wide and ferocious, hissing at him from the gloom.</blockquote>

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