Work for the Warden

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Summary

GM Struan
Session Autumn 810 wk
Night Thursday
Location See discussion page
Level High

Summary
Kern, the warden of the Northern Marches of A&F of Artzdorf and Flugelheim is developing some of his lands and has come across some interesting items and has invited a group of adventurers to help him look into and investigate these unique items.
Party
  • Kern - Elven Earth-Mage Warrior (Chris) Party Employer, 2nd Mil Sci
  • Mortimer - Halfling Wicca (Martin) Party Leader
  • Logan - Human E&E (Neil) Financial advisor
  • Kit - Human Warrior Illusionist (Andrew) Spiritual advisor
  • Wordsmith- A Dwarven Namer (Errol) investigative consultant
  • Pent - Halfling Ice-Mage Warrior (Phil) Kidney surgeon
  • Aryan - Human Warrior Aeir Maig (Stephen) Mil Sci & erratic scribe
Pay
  • Kern guarantees minimum 5k each in services, can't pay cash as he's broke after getting financial advice from Logan
  • Loot - usual split except for stuff that helps Kern's lands and anything the King of A&F wants

Scribe Notes

Chapter 1: It's a Fertile Sterile Valley

Duesday 1st Fruit

Usual introductions, Mortimer's taller, Aryan's stronger, Logan's richer, Wordsmith rituals less and talks more, Pent is faster and sharper, Kit is still way out there, and Kern is employing us.

Kern has saved the Kingdom of Artzdorf and Flugelheim several times over the past 20 years, so the nobles gave him a huge chunk of land and a title: North Warden (Lord Warden of the Northern Marches) The land is a pass known to be sterile and unfarmable for at least 500 years, Kern was expected to fortify and guard the pass, and to tax travellers. The pass - a big river valley which the rivers magically (leaping straight up 200') go out of their way to avoid, has great soil, an extremely deep layer of rich (sterile) loam.

Kern: The plants and animals won't grow
Mortimer: You're not supposed to plant the animals
Kern: It's ok I have people for that
Aryan: You're not supposed to plant the people either

So Kern built his bridges, lakes, towers, and forts, taxed the travellers, and decided to farm the land. Three years later he has worked out that the land is sterile and unfarmable.

  • Animals (and probably people) don't breed.
  • Plants don't grow
  • Take the animals away from the pass and they may be able to breed again - still waiting to find out. Not sure about the people on that count.
  • Soil from the pass will grow plants if you take it out of the pass and mix it with normal soil. Mortimer observes the same can be said of sand.
  • Bring soil in and it will grow plants for a while then they die off.

So Kern unleashed some Earth Elementals to find out what was going on, when they got a few hundred feet underground either side of a North-South line across the pass, they died. But not in the normal 'ow that hurt but at least I can go home now' way, as in the corpse of an Elemental. Kern even managed to drag one back up to his Cellar to show us.

So in short, there is something magical going on that is probably the reason why it's sterile and unfarmable. Kern wants a Namer to find out what's going on and the rest of us to fix it.

Logan, Wordsmith, and Aryan get some refreshing drinks from Mortimer and portal to the Lunar Empire to get lucky. Mortimer checks his special library and finds reference to a pre-war of tears noble house or clan or maybe individual who claimed the area that is now A&F and magically sealed it's boundaries. Kern does his armour ritual on Pent, Kit, and himself. Then we pack Aryan's skiff on Kit's ship and fall to Northern Artzdorf (the slow way as the party is breathless at the thought of Aryan going ballistic).

We arrive during the night, Logan can see the magical border of A&F and momentarily freaks as we crash through it. Fortunately the usual plough-like landing doesn't damage any of Kern's crops or animals, possibly because the valley is sterile and unfarmable. The fortified 'town' is built of stone, solid and defensible, not so much on the aesthetics.

Servants are roused, rooms prepared, most of us nap till morning, Kit creates a small shrine to the powers of light and talks to a cherub. He later reports that the area already seems to be claimed by other gods and they allowed his small consecration but he gets the hint that he shouldn't make a habit of it.

Chapter 2: Did anyone else feel that?

W'nsday 2nd Fruit

We start the day with a decent breakfast, then have a look at Kern's dead rock. It's an elemental shaped rock that's dead, though they do look bigger when they're alive and trying to rip your head off.

Wordsmith reports...

The elemental was 12ft, now it's 6ft. Its Aura is formerly-living-summoned-thing (or something like that). No unexpected spells (23rd Breeze). Its Essence (magical life component thing) was extracted and diminished in the late afternoon. The drain was not instant, but took less than a minute. The last big drain that affected it was just before midnight on the 23rd Breeze. Now there is less than 1/20th of it's essence left. The Essence was 'called' by a greater Earth 'power', though there are other colleges getting in on the drain: Fire, E&E, Mind, Wicca, Rune.

Wordsmith settles down for a full-on ancient divination, then cheats a bit finishes after only an hour and presumably makes up the detail like all of us powerful namers do - btw I'm getting bored of being an Aeir Mage, no girls to impress and nothing to do.

We interrogate Kern a bit to pass the time during the ritual, the Elementals tend to die between about 200' down and 1000' down, near the middle of the valley following a north-south line. Oddly not everyone agrees that the Lay Line in the middle of the sterile valley is the best place ever for a brothel. Logan appreciates the economic benefits.

Now that everyone is bored of looking at the dead rock we fly to the hole where it died. Kern gets a live Elemental to enlarge the tunnel and add some stairs and a drop-shute. A couple of hundred feet down is where the elemental died, but there's no sign of whoever did for it.

We start an underground search pattern, lots of digging, shoring, dust, dirt, and Dwarf baiting. Kit monitors the health of the Earth Elemental and Mortimer monitors the health of its cousin Wordsmith.

Then the elemental sticks its arm through some rock that hurts it, Kit reports it has been drained a bit, Mortimer reports that Wordsmith hasn't been drained, and Wordsmith gleefully reports we're now over 400' down.

There's a magical barrier that has a life/essence draining magic. The barrier is about 10,000 years old and is linked to someone (or something) named Varensjhkre - something Dwarven or Elven that translates to The Organiser or Co-ordinator or something like that. The elemental gets drained a bit more as we experiment but Kern can heal it back up afterwards.

Kern enlarges the area with some tunnellings, the elemental can't sense the empty space on the other side of the barrier, it says it's all solid rock. Walls cast through the barrier wear out faster, Earth and Wicca more than Ice or Namer. A Forbidding against Dwarves seems to spark occasionally as something hits it which the forbidding against humans doesn't. Aryan (that's me btw) waves his arm through and feels nothing, so does it a few more times and feels magic impact.

Kit goes into the ethereal mist and sees that there is a 'tide' pulling down and to the south.

Wordsmith starts divining the barrier. Kern sets the elemental to making a larger chamber this side of the barrier and opening a vertical shaft all the way to the surface. Aryan and Kit estimate from the curve of the barrier that it's a big horizontal cylinder running north-south and the middle is about 250' from us and 100' down. Logan sends his eye through the rock in the direction we indicate and finds a long tunnel with large rune carved flagstones, then his eye winks out (a lot earlier than it should have). Mortimer does a couple of Waters of Vision and Kit uses a small crystal (neither of which last long either) and we memorise the runes on the flagstones and then sketch them out for Mortimer to study and translate. They are Dwarven runes used to write magic. The magic is all about draining from the area and channelling the drained life/power/essence stuff to the south. Mortimer thinks the amount going through the tunnel is lots more (millions?) than that in this area and it's intended to take lots (2 orders of magnitude) more than that. Every chain (66') there are different sets of runes, focus points or concentrators or something and they're numbered (e.g. #5542). If they stay the same distance apart and Dwarves 10,000 years ago count the same as modern ones then #1 is around 70 miles due south, which is roughly beneath the settlement of Hightown on the plateau to the south. We don't know what number it goes up to but guess the northern end is in the mountains somewhere (if it's Arpake, a peak of 6,000', that's around 15 miles due north).

About then (mid-afternoon) we all resist some sort of magical wave that seems to be building up. Mortimer flees at maximum flight speed up the shaft, Logan is not far behind. The Elemental is drained to death. Aryan hacks at the invisible magical wave for no apparent effect. Those that try to cast find there is effectively no mana. Wordsmith is interrupted in his ritual and his floating chest disappears. Then the wave passes in 10 seconds, and apart from the elemental and Chester we're all ok. Checking the ethereal, Kit reports that it is in turmoil like a tidal wave just went through. Mortimer got close to the surface but reports that he wasn't clear of the wave yet.

Chapter 3: It Killed the Sloth!

We dig south for most of a mile until we are close to the source of the brightest-light within the bright light in the Aether. Logan uses his wizardly eye, staff (don't ask, seriously, never-ever ask), and balls to scry the tunnel and sees a crystal-rock Dwarf-Golem thing that appears to be leaning up against an invisible barrier (heading south) at one of the numbered rings (5550).

Kit tries to talk to it via his wizardly bear but it appears anti-social and violent when pushed, it didn't even like the racing (14 feet per minute) sloth.

A convoluted trap that involves a magical staff falling where no-one can hear it is set so Logan will know when the next sucky-magic wave happens.

Eventually even the Philosophers get bored with the one-way conversation and we fly north to the base of Mt Arpake. Kern and his elemental dig, Kit talks to the mists, Aryan fetches his skiff to use its crystal ball.

Mortimer gets bored of digging, Kit diverts him with a flight to the top of the mountain, as the resident Aeir and Ice mages Aryan and Pent accompany them. After shovelling a lot of snow and turning half the peak to lead, we're fairly sure there are no mountain top entrances and the mountain is not a place of power for any of the mages present. Mortimer decides to sled back down the mountain, Aryan, Kit, and Pent are obliged to follow the party leader's lead. Mortimer, Kit, and Pent resort to flying before they run out of snow, Aryan re-joins them in their air after peeling himself off the rocks and scrub.

At the bottom of the diggings we scry block number 6660, there's some dust on the floor which is unusual but no more rock-dwarves and the tunnel continues north at least a few more miles.

Flying to the north side of the mountain we dig again but the mist elementals still can't see the northern end.

Flying on to the northern border of A&F, we find out we've overshot the end. About 2 miles back we find a 200' circle where only scrub and grass grows, checking underneath we find what is presumably a stone 'cap' over what (presumably) used to be an open shaft. Digging and scrying down beside it we're fairly sure this is the northern end of the tunnel which makes it about 100 miles long (8,000 numbered blocks). Below us, the magical draining area bulbs out to a sphere about 750' across.

Tactical Sit. Rep.: The mountain has drawn first blood. It's getting close to dinner time.

Philosothingy quandary of the week: Is it really all that wrong to change college mid-adventure?

Chapter 4: Bicker, bicker, battle!

Kern digs down beside, and then under the 'bulb'. Logan scouts the bulb with his eye (noting the duration is not as truncated as it was when scouting the tunnel).

The 'bulb' is a hemisphere (actually a Stone Igloo according to Pent), about 250' radius with a 150' shell of stone poured over the top of it, the tunnel (Igloo entrance) extends south.

The bulb is constructed from large stone blocks (just like an Igloo), each block is inscribed with Dwarven Runic Magic. There are several levels within the stigloo, each 33' high, ring walls every 66' radius on each level, doorways through the ring walls, and stairs between most of the levels. Most of the place is mapped via a bat, after the wolf cartographer complained it couldn't see. Later, a more reliable wizard eye is used to look at the rune-carved flagstones (which the bat perceived as rough rock).

We poke around and argue for a while then find a 3x3 square of blocks in the floor on the north side that have no runes on them and are bordered by the 'door' style blocks. There is also a chimney of normal earth/stone in the poured pad that leads up to this door. It is obviously the maintenance hatch we've been looking for, an overflow/exhaust valve, or a trap. Aryan and Kern are keen on walking into it to see which, Kit and Mortimer want to avoid it, Logan and Wordsmith want dinner, Pent is undecided whether it's a fishing hole or a privy. We argue a while.

Mortimer decides that he, Kit, and Wordsmith will teleport (via ethereal) in, check out the trap from the inside and divine the workings. They succeed in getting in, any potential trap on the door is well hidden, Wordsmith starts his divination of the central keystone, Mortimer keeps watch, Kit pokes around. Most of the way through the ritual they hear the sound of stone grinding on stone getting closer.

Wordsmith reports...

It sucks mana/life/power stuff and channels it to something. Several colleges, shaping, and some divine power involved in the making. The two main magics were performed by a shaper and a priest ~10,000 years ago. Around a hundred years ago the outer defences were breached and the magic was fiddled with to redirect it to power something that is more mechanical than magic.

Wordsmith completes his ritual and starts reporting results.

Meanwhile Kern and Aryan have declared this a combat situation requiring military leadership. Kern digs up the chimney to within 50' of the maintenance hatch, Aryan fetches dinner.

Just as dinner is almost ready, Logan (who had been spying on events inside the stigloo) reports that a rock-Dwarf-golem thing and a ghost have attacked the investigating team and they are fleeing towards the northern edge.

We head to the Chimney, Kern tunnels through the last of the rock and then carefully through the door ensuring his hole does not take out the door frame. (Cunning use of angles and conical sections here, by the Druid!)

We leap in to find the others have already escaped into the ethereal, taking up ambush positions we wait for the golem thing to arrive, a quickened age (at least 10 seconds) passes while we wait for it to get closer, Pent ices up a charging path.

The others drop out of ethereal into the correct place in our marching order just before we attack, mentioning that the walls are one-way barriers in the ethereal. The ghost exists on the ethereal, and the golem can move between the two planes.

Pent opens with a volley of iced chakra?darts? which get deflected by a barrier, Logan slows and Levitates the golem but while it is affected by the magic it shakes it off within the pulse. Kit charges and delivers a glancing blow from his burning stick taking a decent hit in return, Aryan slides down the ice, leaps and hacks the golem with his Axe, Kern does a flying charge and almost hits Aryan with his Pike, Pent slides in behind it and carves out a large chunk with his earth pick. Then everyone whales on it merrily. Less than 5 seconds after engaging, the rock thing is a pile of former rock thing.

The Ghost-Revenant Dwarf (in Dwarven) asks us to help his master. When this is helpfully translated for Kit he informs us he must help.

Mortimer confirms that he can exit via Kern's hole in the maintenance hatch.

T.S.R.: The sloth is avenged. We're inside the trap but have a way out. Dinner might be burning.

PQotw: If we kill the revenant, is Kit still obliged to help it? Yes, and avenge it, if it has been (or is about to be) treated unjustly.

Chapter 5: Read, Talk, Fly, Sleep, Fly

Kern waits outside ready to re-open the hatch; Aryan hauls the corpse out for Wordsmith to study; Kit, Mortimer and Logan talk to the Dwarf Revenant. It is bound/pacted to its master with a powerful geas-like magic, its generic compulsion to loyally serve was upgraded to a release me now compulsion and he presumably died trying. He's being drained by the area so is a bit daft but is being sustained by something else so is not completely gone either.

Lesson for adventurers: It sucks to be a bound-pacted-geased Dwarf in a life-mana sucky thing. Friends don't let friends get pacted or geased! Or let them get tattoos of their mistress on their arse but that's a whole other story.

Whether we learn more from talking to the Dwarf or just get more confused is almost as debatable as whether he and his master are good or bad. But Kit won't let us kill the Revenant until we find out.

We have dinner. It is hot but bland.

Wordsmith reports...

The Dwarf Revenant...

After careful placement of his undead-eating-trouser-weasel on the other side of the closed hatch, Wordsmith starts Divining the Revenant; Mortimer reads more of the rune stones; Logan starts exploring the rest of the Stigloo with his eye; Aryan and Pent guard the investigators; Kern and Kit wait outside ready to get us out and build a fancy stone boudoir to pass the time. Once Logan recovers from the shock of failing to cast a spell in the mana-sucky mage-unfriendly Stigloo, he and Aryan finish the scouting by flying around. They find a room in the middle of the fourth tier that has lots of keystones and swirly magic, and a room in the middle of the third tier full of inactive Dwarf-rock-golem things (Dienar) and a bunch of raw materials for making more. Logan acquires some of the raw crystal and Aryan nicks a whole golem. Mortimer reads the runes on the swirly room and confirms it is a focusing room that takes the gathered power and funnels it down towards the tunnel. Mortimer has also found the spot (keystone at the bottom middle) that was tampered with 100 years ago - but he can't fix it.

Wordsmith reports...

The Dienar...

We exit and fly back to Kernistown to spend the night.

Wordsmith Divines the golem and raw crystals; Aryan introduces himself to the single women in town; the others socialise and some sleep is had.

Th'rsday 3rd Fruit

We have breakfast. It's nice.

Following the line of the tunnel, we fly south to where we estimate block 0 to be, a few miles west of Hightown. The grass and animals are healthy, as soon as we leave we leave Kernigstan.

Digging a discrete ½ mile deep hole (without informing the local horse farmer) we hit a huge block of bound stone. We dig around, checkout the stone, talk to some elementals, and manage to work out that the stone is at least 8 miles square with bound walls curving away gently at the edges, extending an unknown amount deeper (think tower shield, Aryan). The binding was done with hundreds of thousands of Dwarf volunteers who each contributed some of their life essence to the binding. The Dwarven Empire is responsible for this, with help from several Dwarven Gods. It was built around 17,000 years ago, and repeatedly 'topped up' with life energy unti laround 11,000 years ago (just before the massive tunnel was built). Randoming sampling of local elementals informs us that where the stone ends (around 5 miles north) there are several bright lines (mana-sucky tunnels) that converge at the block.

T.S.R.: Deeper hole, bigger artefact. Bigger problem.

PQotw: Is it better to scare and worry the local farmer about what is under his lands or to dig under his land without his consent and leave him blissfully ignorant? [Actually, its a question for Miss Manners, not a PQ]

Chapter 6: Is anybody home?

Kern and Aryan supervise the Elemental while it digs down close to where the mana-sucky-tunnel comes in, but stop when its gets too sucky. There is an opening in the bound-earth shell down there and scrying with Logan's eye we see Dwarven city gates. The elemental can sense other openings in the shell so we dig towards those in the hope that they are less sucky. We find a minor gate and drop in to seek entrance. Kern returns to the surface quickly and caps the entrances to our tunnels with some earth & rocks so as to hide our activities and possibly prevent innocent deaths of men or animals.

The ragged tunnels exiting the city has battlements around it although nobody appears to be home and it looks like they haven't been for a while. The wards and traps are still active and the construction is sound. Wordsmith ponders the first ward, Aryan tries to cut his way through it for a couple of minutes, Wordsmith wonders if he could counterspell it, Aryan decides he doesn't want to be an Aeir Maig or a Namer any more, Wordsmith talks about casting a counterspell, Aryan and Kit use the non-mage method to clear the Ward, the Whirlwind-Vortex like effect stirs some dust.

Mortimer marks where the trap mechanism is in the gates and Kit makes a sally port in it. Wordsmith suppresses the next ward, an audio alarm. The kill zone has the requisite murder holes with some kind of nastiness above, Pent seals them up with Ice. The next gates are riddled with dead-bolt traps so Pent disarms them and picks the lock. We can't DA past the gates so Aryan steps through and triggers the audio alarm ward on the other side. The noise is painful and deafening to some of the party until Aryan cuts it off.

Inside is a huge Dwarven city. 8 miles by 8 miles by 20 - 30 levels! Nobody seems to be home, but they did have time to pack as they left. We fly towards the main gates where our sucky-tunnel comes in, and find it without getting too lost. The sucky-tunnel continues down the middle of the main 'hallway' towards the centre of the city, we follow it.

At the centre of the city is a huge open area now mostly occupied by a giant stone dome, our sucky-tunnel and 5 others feed into the dome through a bunch of smaller tubes. It is difficult to scry inside, we get a limited view of the centre of a city trashed by battle.

Wordsmith reports...

The Barrier is a powerful prison, strong enough to contain most demons and probably some gods.

We split up, Wordsmith Divines the dome while Kit guards him, Kern and Pent search one way, Aryan and Mortimer search the other, Logan keeps over-watch.

Kern finds what was probably the forward command, Mortimer finds a temple.

T.S.R.: Big empty city. Big prison cell. Big bad inside.

PQotw: If the Revenant's master had to be left inside to close the prison and we could rescue him but only by replacing him with someone else, who would you leave inside?

Chapter 7: This wasn't part of the plan

We work out exactly what happened:

  • The Dwarves had different factions/guilds in the city: Mechanicians, Mages, Paladins, Church (may or may not be different from Pallies), some others, and a King/Emperor in charge.
  • Some of them (probably Mechanicians) did some big project that the church types were unkeen on. Probably building a big mechanical thing that produced Dienars, or maybe self-replicating Dienars, or maybe they just summoned a Demon or found a Balrog.
  • It went wrong (or worked too well), they tried to deal with it but failed.
  • The mages came up with a plan to contain it/them, the Paladins led the fight against it/them.
  • A couple of years fighting Dienars/Devils/Demons/Rogue Dwarves (something bad beginning with D) in a holding action while the mages and church types built the prison and the mana-sucky tunnels.
  • Then they all packed up and left for some reason.

The magic on the prison is now at about 45% of what it once was, this drops a bit every time there is a mana sucky pulse (which are happening once or twice most days). We work out it has a year at most before it fails completely, or maybe less than a season, but almost certainly more than a week.

Some of the party doubt we can take something a nation of Dwarves couldn't cope with and over-rule the frontal assault plan.

We spend the rest of the day poking around the dome and city.

We camp for the night in one of the empty buildings, it's very quiet, nothing happens.

Frysday 4th Fruit

Kern says it's time to go check in with the King before we start something that might destroy his kingdom.

We carefully exit the way we came in, then start flying towards Flugelheim city.

Aryan and the Kit jellyfish abandon the party and go ballistic. Wordsmith flies the skiff for a while until the rest of the party get bored with the slow speed, they leave the skiff on a mountain top.

While waiting for the others to catch up, Kit and Aryan check out the spoke closest to our path to Flugelheim, there are 'ring tunnels' connecting the spokes about 5 miles out and 50 miles out and maybe at other intervals. There is probably a Dienar in this spoke about the same distance out as the one under Kernikstan. With a good fire going we are almost dry by the time the others catch up so there's no need to mention the buried alive and near drowning incidents.

We fly on and reach the city in the late morning. Count Logan is miffed that the town guards recognise Kern and Aryan but not him.

We make our way to court and spook the major domo into organising an audience with the King just after dinner.

Chapter 8: Orders from on high

After a light dinner, we are escorted to an informal private meeting with King Matthew, Seneschal Geoffrey, Admiral Inigo, and Malkor discretely listening in.

We brief them on the situation, the King confirms Kern's mandate to deal with the issue discretely and in the nest interests of A&F. We are to keep Geoffrey informed of our progress, Malkor will arrange a method of doing so.

The King retires, we argue about what to do next, eventually compromising on splitting up to maximise damage. First Malkor portals us to Hightown and we fetch the intact inanimate Dienar for Malkor to examine.

  • Kern and Kit will talk to local Western Church and Trinity representatives about what's going on.
  • Mortimer, Logan, and Pent will talk to local mages and check out the local libraries for anything of significance about 100 years ago.
  • Aryan and Wordsmith will interrogate some Dwarven Gods about their activities 10,000 years ago. Wordsmith is petrified.
Reapsday 5th Fruit

We meet up again in Flugelheim for lunch and exchange news.

Kern and Kit talked to Father Adam, Lady Adeline, a local Raphaelite, and a Cherub. We have the general support of the religions. The threat is a created being of pure logic.

Mortimer, Logan, and Pent checked out the archives of the Royal Wizards. While there were not any powerful or disgruntled Mechanician-Mages in the area at the time, there was a day about 100 years ago when every magical working (ritual/shaping/alchemy) in progress at the time was disrupted and/or failed.

Aryan and Wordsmith talked to the senior rune master and eldest priest at Zirac Holding, the priest had a dream/sending from the gods, the Dwarves (Mechanicians) built something they should not have, the gods would not create such a thing, its minions now seek to free it. If we stop the minions then the prison will repair itself and should be good for a few aeons. And we need to suppress all knowledge of how it was built.

Malkor has a couple of amulets that will let us communicate with Geoffrey (Mortimer & Kern will use them), we portal back to Hightown and fly back to Kern's lands.

Kit experiments with singing to the inanimate Dienar and makes it explode within 10 minutes. He thinks he could get that down to a couple of minutes each.

T.S.R.: Enemy identified. Plan: Re-enter original Stigloo, drag inactive Dienars outside and sing to them, then go in via tunnels and ring roads and kill all of the active ones.

PQotw: Is it bad just because the gods disapprove?

Chapter 9: Skirmishes

Just after dusk, we decend beneath the Stigloo in Kern's lands, and scope it out via trained bats and wizard eye before entering. There is at least one Dienar on the third level. Kit sings for a minute and explodes it, while Logan determines the deployment of the remaining Dienars. There are 4 activated Dienar standing guard on the third level, and then two rings of 4 each on the fourth level, with a 13th Dienar in the storeroom activating one of the remaining 84 Dienar. When attacked, the second Dienar starts countering the musical attacks with a counterpoint using beat frequencies, and after some musical wrestling, is left damaged but functional. Kit and Logan start long-range attacks on the central room, Kit taking out the unanimated while Logan disrupts the animation attempts. Aryan leads a mad charge of the party into the Stigloo. Kern stays outside to ensure the party can leave later, and Logan stays with him so he can access his gold. Pent, Aryan, and Wordsmith triple-team the isolated third-floor guards, and take them out with ease; Mortimer tries some curses while Kit tags along, continuing his remote musical attacks. Those with ultrasonic hearing suffer from the continuous pure high-pitched tones at the volume of thunder echoing in the stone shell. The outer fourth-floor guards are in three pairs - the other two guards have fallen back into the central room, where they are helping to animate the Dienars. Logan's attacks have disrupted most of their efforts - only one of them successfully activates a Dienar during the first wave of the counter-attack. Meanwhile more and more deactivated Dienars are becoming shards. The first pair of guards fought as a team, but were taken down by the conga-line style manovering by Pent, Aryan and Wordsmith, who ensured that two of the adventurers could always attack the Dienar from the rear. The second pair of guards included a mage(?) that blasted a couple of large energy attacks at the party, forcing Wordsmith to revert to being a namer; this Dienar also interfered with Mortimer's curses (but not his hellfires). With Pent attacking three times more slowly than he had initially, and Wordsmith casting defensive magic, Aryan was standing alone and was starting to run out of healing options, having already drained Logan dry, and spending more time drinking than fighting. As the last few unanimated Dienars were being protected from his musical attack, Kit instead stepped in to distract the Dienar-mage to buy the party time, but it drew mana into itself, and exploded on the next solid hit, nearly killing Kit. Mortimer then killed the remaining Dienarwith hellfire. The party took a knee

Half-time score seven-nil
Pent 2; Aryan: 1.5; Wordsmith 1; Mortimer 1.5; Kit 1*.
* own goal by Dienar-mage?
Initial Dienars: 84 Deactivated, 13 Activated.
Current Dienars: 2 patrolling, 4 in storeroom, + 3 soon-to-be active in storeroom. 81 musical dust, 7 destroyed by melee/magic.

Chapter 10: Charge!

A pause for breath, then charge!

Now he has finished securing our exit, Kern joins the fun and the last two Dienar on patrol go down.

The 7 active Dienars inside the centre chamber are in formation for some form of magical mayhem, Logan disrupts it by throwing them across the room.

Aryan leads the charge through the door barriers, Kit follows through a different door, the rest of the party not far behind. The chain of 4 Dienar boosting each other deal out heinous magical and physical damage and don't take much in return until Mortimer blinds half of them, Pent and Kit disrupt the chain, and Kern destroys one with his mace taking out another and himself in the resulting discharge. The odds have swung and the fight is quickly over. Kern (white-hair) even manages to stand up on his own with only a little twitching.

We stop for a few minutes to heal and smash up Dienar bits. Then down to the stigloo exit tunnel.

Aryan and Kit play in the mana flow and venture down the tunnel a mile to make sure it's safe and that they can come back. Kit turns Aryan into a giant yellow Canary as a visible indicator for when magic starts failing. With the all-clear, the entire party flies down the tunnel, slowing after ~20 miles to look for the Dienar we first saw. We find it a few chains in from our first encounter, it is expecting us and looks to be charged up ready for a big blast. Mortimer and Logan soften it up a bit from range, Aryan, Kern, and Pent charge into melee, Kit and Wordsmith position themselves in between to provide magical protection. The expected blast is big and would be fatal to anyone who failed to resist but Mortimer and Logan are out of range (80') and the rest of us resist, then we take it down.

Stigloo Dienars: 81 musical dust, 16 destroyed by melee/magic/self destruct.
Tunnel Dienars: 1 destroyed. 5 to go? Or 500 to go if the other stigloos are also packed.

Chapter 11: Solid Tactics

Logan loots the rubble and to everyone's surprise finds it has a mithril heart.

Aryan reports...

It's a mana filter, dirty mechanician mana on the outside, good clean mana on the inside. The bad Dienars are breaking the filters.

The mana is roiling at the node the Dienar was working at. Aryan explains how it works, eventually the Namer and Philosophers catch up. But they use bigger words so it sounds more impressive when they say it.

Overcome by remorse at the missed looting, we fly back to the stigloo, sift the remnants and set our treasure sniffers loose, but to no avail. These Dienars had no heart.

A tedious flight back to the roiling barrier, after using the canary to check it is safe to pass through, we fly (south) down the tunnel almost 30 miles then the tunnel does a dog-leg down about 150' before continuing. At the bottom of the 'sump' the ring tunnels angle off at 60 degrees, presumably connecting up to the other tunnels. We fly down the west ring tunnel heading for the next spoke to see how many Dienars it has.

40 miles later we come to an almost identical sump. We work out that the ring tunnels (and maybe the whole wedge) suck up (drain) just one flavour of magic and the spoke next to it is rich in that magic. The first spoke was rich in Earth and the first wedge was earth draining (and a deathly lure to earth mages), the next one is Ice aligned.

Heading down the spoke we see a Dienar doing it's leaning-filter-breaking thing. We stop at 80' and start blasting it with magic, confirming our guess, it cannot pass the barrier to reach us and its magic has less range than ours. It makes things a little interesting by actively resisting (failure => backfire in this charged mana environment) but in less than half a minute it crumples and we find another mithril heart amongst the rubble.

The central chamber of this stigloo has racks of inactive Dienar and one in the middle studiously making more. We charge in with caution in case it is a trap, Aryan swings wildly to draw its attention, Kern whacks it with his mace. The discharge as it explodes sets Kern's remaining hair on end again, Aryan shrugs it off as it arcs around him. The inactive Dienars stay inactive, so Kit sings most of them to rubble and the grunts break up the rest with picks and hammers.

We camp for 9 hours, get some sleep, eat, purify and then set out again.

Sunday 6th Fruit

We refine and repeat our tactics in spoke 3. 3 hours flying down the spoke, along the (straight) ring tunnel, out the next spoke. Spell casters with BC enhance to counteract the active resistance blast the spoke Dienar, Logan loots the mithril heart. In the stigloo Aryan destroys the making Dienar with Kern's Mace, Kit sings to the inactive ones, the grunts smash the remainder.

We have lunch then 4 hours later we've repeated the process in spoke 4.

Another 4 hours and we've cleared spoke 5. We have dinner and bicker about whether to camp now or push on.

Doubling up to try to make the last 2 hours of flying last 4 hours we clear spoke 6, then camp on the hatch of stigloo 6.

Moonday 7th Fruit

Breakfast, purification, 4 hours flying back to the original stigloo and then we're out in open air again. Kern re-seals the hatch, then we fly back to his place for a lunch that is not illusion covered gruel.

After lunch we fly up to the inverted waterfall. The area around it was blasted by Aim almost 20 years ago, Kern now recalls that it was a nice village and a water place of power before that. While things still fall normally in the area, the river charges up the cliff just like a normal waterfall - but upside down. Aryan dives into the river and swims up-down the waterfall, Kit tries to run up it, then climb it, and finally resorts to swimming up it too, but with better technique and speed than Aryan.

After a bit more play we fly back to Kern's for drinks, dinner and a bit of partying.

Duesday 8th Fruit

Kern talks with his goddess during the night but is a bit reluctant to discuss it, other than telling us she's happy with the work we've done.

We rest, relax, play and party the day away.

W'nsday 9th Fruit

Setting out early we fly to Ranke in Impetuous Grace to see the Zirac Dwarves, they will re-smelt the mithril hearts so that there is no trace of the mechanician magic remaining, rather than have us hang around for a week while they do it they send us off with equivalent weight in un-enchanted mithril.

Kit reluctantly lets Aryan navigate on the way back while the party hides in an icy cabin so we can get to Flugelheim for dinner.

This time we get invited to the formal dinner, publicly thanked for unspecified services to the realm. Everyone assumes we killed off some enemy of the state, a few party members deny it which confirms it must be true. Though a few smug courtiers spread the secret truth about the magical flying city off the south coast that we found and looted for the king.

In a private meeting afterwards we flesh out the details of the brief report we gave through the amulets.

We have the gratitude of the Kingdom, which we take take as cash or whatever is in bag number 3.

Kern tells us the rest of the communication from his goddess...

Chapter 12: It's a Dead Valley

The valley is a mass grave, about 14,000 years ago the Stigloo building Dwarves slaughtered a nation of Orcs who were threatening their northern border, the bodies were dumped in the valley and buried under a mountain of soil.

The mass grave valley is sacred to Kern's Goddess Kubti (Death, Earth, and Darkness) and that is why nothing will grow.

She is happy for her follower Kern to live in the valley and agrees to release some of the valley so Kern and his people can grow some food, keep livestock, and stay fertile. Kit agrees to stay on for a couple of weeks to help de-consecrate a few miles of land and Mortimer stays on to supply the needed beverages and to provide some blessings of his own.

Th'rsday 10th Fruit

The party scatters, some staying on for a bit longer but all eventually heading home under their own steam.

Calendar

Autumn: Fruit (4)
  Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
Waning Lugnasad 1 Guild Meeting
Fly to A&F.
2 Holes in Kernikstan, Stigloo 3 Into the
Dead Dwarf City
4 Flugelheim & Zirac 5 Flugelheim, Invade Stigloo 1,2,... 6 3,4,5,6.
All Clear!
New Moon 7 Out, Kernistown, Waterfall 8 Kernistown 9 Zirac, Flugelheim 10 11 12 13
Waxing 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Full Moon 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Waning 28 29 30 1 2 3 4

Nominations and SGT Snippets

Reference Information

People

Places

Artzdorf and Flugelheim

  • Northern March
  • Artz River - water leaps 200' in the air to bypass the valley
  • High River - goes underground then emerges higher up on the plateau south of the valley.

Stigloo

The dimensions, layouts and consolidated facts about the Dwarven artefact AKA Stigloo (Stone Igloo).

200' radius hemisphere at the northern end is 600-900 feet below ground in the mountains on the northern border of Artzdorf.

The tunnel heads south for (estimated) 100 miles with a numbered power channelling ring every 66'. The tunnel is about 800' deep as it crosses the valley and has a 250' radius magic draining aura.

There are several types of stone blocks lining the stigloo and tunnel with different densities of runes inscribed:

  • Wall stones - least runes, most common, magic is primarily shielding/protection/containment.
  • Ring stones - dense runes, used every 66' down the tunnel, magic is primarily gathering and channelling power (life/mana/essence).
  • Border stones - dense runes, found around doorways and entrances, magic is continuation of the wall stones magic over the opening.
  • Key stones - extremely dense runes, found on the floors and ceilings at the centre of the stigloo, magic is key-stone-ish, it holds everything together.

The artefact uses magic of several colleges (Earth, Fire, E&E, Mind, Wicca, Rune) and some divine/holy power.

History
Constructed about 10,000 years ago.
Breached and meddled with about ?? years ago.

Mil Sci

Skirmish Formations Watches
Default

Aryan Kern Pent
Wordsmith Kit
Logan Mortimer

Double File

Aryan Kern
Wordsmith Pent
Kit
Logan Mortimer

Single File

Aryan
Kern
Pent
Wordsmith
Mortimer
Kit
Logan

Conga Line

Pent
enemy
Aryan
enemy
Wordsmith

Pent & Wordsmith
Aryan & Logan
Kern & Mortimer
Sub: Kit

Loot and Expenses

Standard Buffs

Armour / Defence / Protection
  • Kern: Earth Armour on up to 3 people 42% Def -1 dam +Magic Protection (Kern, Pent, Kit)
  • Logan: Aura of Power Rk 12 +18% Def, -5 off *all* Dam (SP, FT, EN, SG, Drain, Poison.. etc) (Logan, Aryan, Wordsmith)
  • Mortimer: Wiccan Defence on self
Stats
  • Kern: Rk 19 Strength of Stone - up to 20 pts split between PS and EN (on everyone)
Combat
  • Logan: Quickness
  • Aryan: Melee Only: +10IV +10SC +10Def +1 Pass Action at End of Pulse
  • Aryan: Raise Morale +5 WP (should be running most of most fights)
  • Logan: Dampening Enchantment (Area) Remove 12 ranks off all incoming spells effects.
  • Pent: Weapon of Ice +21% +7 Dam for up to 10 hours.
Other
  • Logan: Enhance Enchant Rk 15
  • Logan: Greater Enchantment Rk 20: +21% on 2 areas for 6 days 8,000sp for all areas.
  • Aryan: Witchsight Rk6 on 1 target (Wordsmith)
  • Logan: Detect Scrying: Notice any Scrying attempt. Can "Locate" source at -20%
  • Logan: 98% chance of stopping scry on an entity/area (from spell/ritual effect)
  • Kit: Faith shares MR 50'. MR 133% a default, but 88% for Wicca, 98% for Thaumaturgies.
[excludes Kern, as a follower of a Dark/Death/Druidic Blood-sacrifice goddess].
  • Kit: Disguise 36 hrs. Shape-shifting 5.5 hrs. Invis 3 hrs.
  • Kern: Earth Elementals
Transport
  • Aryan: Aeir Skiff 13mph - 130mph (crowded)
  • Kit: Wingéd Unicycle 38mph (crowded)
  • Wordsmith: Damn pointy-ears 'commandeered' my ride - it's still nicked, no matter how you dress it up!
  • Mortimer: Flying 70mph 14hrs/day
  • Kern: walking pace in my tunnels ;-)
  • Aryan/Wordsmith/Kit: Impetuous Grace 25-70mph, slightly roomier than a Skiff. Probably too large and slow.