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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7245088" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 25, Part Two - Macdam & Jungle TrekMacdamThe Impossible had been badly damaged and was in need of repair.  They gave up on trying to reach Elfaivar for now, and circled round the Isle of Titans to Macdam.  While they went, they interrogated the prisoners. None of the black-clad elite soldiers remained alive.  The regular soldiers referred to them as Porteurs de Mort, but didn’t know much else about them.  The story they had been told was that the Impossible had been involved in an assassination attempt on Han Jierre a few days ago.Macdam – city of eccentric technologists – concentric semi-circles of whitewashed towers encircled by tall mountains and jungle.  Korrigan went to talk with the Governor* to arrange repairs to the Impossible and safe haven for a small Beran fleet:  On his three-day journey around Lanjyr, Leon had taken in Crisillyir, Flint (where, in heavy disguise, he had purloined a Wayfarer Lantern), the Valley of the Gith (to retrieve Matunaaga and Hildegard) and finally Citado Cavallo.  There he had secured the aid of Corta Nariz de Guerra and had been underway to join the Impossible when their luncheon was interrupted by news of the naval skirmish.  Although he and the other unit members had teleported ahead, Corta Nariz was already over halfway from the Marrajado de Oro and would be in Macdam very shortly to provide protection for the Impossible.  She was bringing their submersible, the Sunfish – armed with the Tyrant’s Eye.  They also persuaded Captain Smith to allow the Skull of Cheshimox to be transported from Trekhom and used as a ship-board weapon to repel boarders (assuming Rumdoom was on board, that is).  Having seen his men die in battle, Rutger was less inclined to be staunchly superstitious.  Hildegard contacted the Cult of Rumschatology and arranged for them to bring the skull under heavy security and with great caution.(Rumdoom was making a slow recovery, but it was decided not to vex him with logistics.)To Uriel:  His presence was willing – he had after all predicted that he would need to join them “after the wind-woman comes” –  but the real impetus had been the gith elders and Matunaaga’s father.  They absorbed the news of Xambria’s defection with quiet concern, but were not at all placated by the suggestion that the Obscurati had no cause to disturb them: Uriel was only in the Hidden Valley to protect him from the Ob, who may very well decide that an incursion was worthwhile (having murdered at least two incarnations before him).  And so it was decided that Uriel would leave with Matunaaga and join the unit after all. Uriel was strange: extremely tall and thin, with light-blue skin and dark-purple, almost black markings (where Malthusius’ had been white).  He still wore the dark-blue robes and cowl of the Congregation of Adelbrand – the devout clergy sect among whom he had been found.  Uriel had carefully cleaned and repaired this single set of robes for over three years now, though the hem and cuffs were looking threadbare.  Uriel had a habit of standing very still, hands clasped behind his back, and regarded everything – everyone – with intense scrutiny.  Occasionally, he would interject with advice or, worse, predictions that tended to be doom-laden.  (Shortly after they first arrived on ship, he had turned to Matunaaga and said, “Would it be helpful or unhelpful for you to know that is the last time you will see your father?” Matunaaga turned and stalked away.)  Uru gave him some items that once belonged to Malthusius and Uriel complained that they hadn’t been very well looked after.  But Korrigan’s main concern was that Uriel was totally out of his depth, with no means of defending himself or aiding the unit in combat.  (He was a dab hand at rituals, it turned out, but they wouldn’t keep him alive, especially if the Ob came after him…)While they were in Macdam, Gupta made sure to send to Wolfgang von Recklinghausen: “Don’t know what you did to me but thanks again.  If offer you got has anything to do with your son, get the hell out.”  She didn’t receive a reply.Jungle TrekCareful to avoid Ob spies, they slipped out of Macdam on a single Beran ship, leaving the others to stand watch over the Impossible. Sure enough, they found the Danoran steam frigates circling just beyond the horizon.  (Presumably the submersible was scouting ahead.)Soon afterwards they were back on course for a spot along the coast of Elfaivar just to the west of the Tapi River and Port Perrault.  When they were a few miles away from their destination, they lowered the Sunfish into the water and took the submersible the rest of the way.  The small vessel was very cramped.  Ideal for four, with a maximum capacity of six, they were testing her engines and their own patience with a complement of nine (having brought Hildegard and Thurgid with them).  A few sweaty hours later they reached the mouth of the Tapi and came ashore, leaving the Sunfish unmanned and anchored on the seabed.There had been a lot of discussion about what to do with Rumdoom, who was still unsteady on his feet. Hildegard was adamant he should not be left behind, as the travel and adventure would bring him back to himself.  Obviously, a wheelchair was no use and Leon’s offer of the absurdist web was dismissed too.  They toyed with the idea of a palanquin, but that would require a trip to Port Perrault to hire porters.  (Uriel said he knew a ritual that could provide a magical floating disc. “Tenser’s?” asked Gupta. “No, Uriel’s,” said Uriel. “Who’s Tenser?”) In the end, they decided that the best mode of transport would be the clockwork carriage figurine which, as it ran on legs, would be just as able to cope with the terrain as they were.  Uriel performed another of his rituals and summoned a ghostly hand over their area map, on which Leon had drawn the locations of the three eladrin settlements.  Uriel asked the hand which would be ‘best to visit first’ and the hand pointed at Akravan.  And so they set off in style, pausing for regular meals and the occasional respite from the heat in the form of a dip in the broad, slinking Tapi.The journey took a few days, during which they crossed paths with a parade of elephants accompanied by some local fey, were stalked (but never attacked) by a dire tiger, and came across a ruined village with a centuries-old stone marker listing the names of every woman who perished there from the Great Malice. Gupta found herself entranced by this, and thought of her mother.  Close to Akravan, they were accosted by an eladrin hermit who performed mild curses and left bloody totems in their path to try to make them leave his territory. The Dreaming bled through in places, and one morning they woke beside a grotto that wasn’t there at nightfall and that sang for them to come down into its depths. On the final night before Akravan, while they were setting up camp, Uriel claimed to sense “wrongness and rot” close by.  Uru went to investigate and did not return until morning.  When he did, he looked different somehow. There were strange stains on his fingers and lips and his uniform was dishevelled, but the biggest difference was intangible – an alteration in his manner: less febrile and predatory, perhaps. He told them that he felt like he had been gone for many days. Deep in the brush he had found a hole into the Bleak Dreaming – a border between the three realms where the deep faen lived. There he had come across some of his people who greeted him with hostility and suspicion because of the machines he carried, but were hugely in awe of his fading form**.  He left Little Jack behind and joined them around a campfire, where he spent long hours recounting the death of everything he had killed, augmenting his performance with help from the ghostly entourage. At the end he said, “War is coming!” Then he brandished his regalia of the creeping fey and chittered like an ettercap in a call to arms, before handing them El Perro’s pistol as a gift. The deep faen shaman announced Uru was an incarnation of The Fading One, a figure from deep faen folklore. The shaman rewarded him with a hallucinogenic draught that brought on a trance in which he learned how to shadow walk.  Now Uru could pass with his comrades through the Bleak Gate instead of the real world when necessary.  The deep faen also taught him how to make ghost rot, a deadly necrotic poison. And all that before breakfast!In Akravan they found signs of recent Obscurati activity around colossal indentations in the earth, which could only have been caused by Borne. But the strongest signs of Ob activity clustered near the handful of archways or doorways that had not crumbled from centuries of disuse. Leon detected traces of strange planar energy similar to those emitted by the Wayfarer Lantern when used to translate to the Dreaming. Tossed into bushes, they also found discarded glass vials with traces of oil infused with different planar energy. But the Ob were long gone.Before they could begin to explore Akravan further, they received a sending from Corta Nariz:  Scouts from the Bloody Stump Trading Posts had visited both Bharat and Rumah Terakir.  They had found nothing in Bharat, but a large contingent of Porteurs de Mort was already approaching the latter.  The unit sprang into action and rode phantom steeds through the Bleak Gate to arrive in Rumah Terakir in less than a day.  (All save Rumdoom who still travelled in the mechanical carriage and was by now a few days behind them.)Rumah Terakir was clearly a much bigger site than Akravan.  There were many more clearings where ancient structures inhibited growth and they spotted intriguing monoliths and pyramids through the trees.Leon cast a spell of invisibility and he and Uru set off into the ruins to explore…End of Session *In a prolonged encounter that went unreported at the time, Korrigan really did take one for the team:  the Governor of Macdam was a ridiculous gentleman who wore very old-fashioned, lace-fringed clothes buttoned tightly over his rotund frame, and a very obvious wig.  To complete his 'look' he sported a tiny moustache beneath his bulbous nose. A man of some pretention, he was overjoyed to receive an official guest and personally ‘entertained’ Korrigan over dinner with a rendition of the national anthem of Risur, performed on a screechy violin.  All the while, his pet capuchin gorged dates from a bowl in the centre of the table, and spat the pits with suspicious accuracy – ricocheting off the silverware and pinging off wine glasses to whizz past Korrigan’s head.  [Here, Korrigan employed ‘I love the smell of witchoil’ for the second time in as many days and remained unphased by the monkey.] The end result of this interminable dinner was that Korrigan got what he came for. ** Uru had been fading ever since his close brush with death on Cauldron Hill, where he was tricked and trapped by the quasit Tokoloshe (and only freed by Malthusius).  His form has somehow been infected by the essence of the Bleak Gate and sometimes seems almost translucent. (In a reversal of fortunes, the quasit Tokoloshe now resides in a mechanical liturgical calendar in Uru’s Garden.  The calendar marks certain holy days by ejecting the quasit like a cuckoo from a cuckoo clock, through a fine mist of holy water.)Musical InterludeThis is the track I sent out to my players before this session, to accompany their trek through the jungle lands and ruins of Elfaivar:[MEDIA=youtube]INHttEHCZEw[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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