Don't go breaking my heart

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The Graff


Scribe Notes

The Party & Mission

Adventure: Don't go breaking my heart
GM: Callum
Session: Spring 807 wk
Night: Thursday
Location: 31 Methuen Road, Avondale. Map
Level: High and its a Callum game :-0

Party (full).


Employer
The employer is introduced by Ulrich the Sorcerer, and is The Graff, a small somewhat grubby looking Hobbit who has his teeth filed into points and appears to have no eyes. Guild reps assure everyone he is a nice kind fellow really.
Mission
'Recover' an item.
Pay
A lump sum of 150,000sp in total in advance, in the form of Mithril ingots.
Astor's Manor - A Google Doc write-up from Callum.

Narrative

We meet in a bland and indistinguishable guild meeting room on the day of the guild meeting. The Graff a hobbit with no eyes and pointy teeth meets us and pours quite a large pile of mytheral onto the table out of a small pouch of holding which is made if finely woven dragon skin.

He wants us to retrieve the Heart of Glass (HoG) from the City of Silver. Both the heart of Glass and the Silver city are ancient 50,000 years is not too unlikely. The Graff does not care how we retrieve the HoG nor does he care to tell us what he wants to do with it.

The HoG is a magical soul storage devise. It stores souls, it can store many lesser souls of fewer greater souls, apparently the soul of a god would pretty much fill it.

The Silver city (SC) is also known as Mrachek it is a city of worship populated by monks. Lath finds out that there is a dark city perhaps a mirror underneath. SC is also an ancient Library. It is only found by going on a spirit quest. To enter you must walk, as you walk you will pass through two gates the first a horned gate will destroy you if you are a demon and destroy demonic items you may posses. The second an Ivory gate is called the gate of truth and will destroy any illusions and anyone who is untruthful.

We decide that Lath is party leader, Eric is 1st mil Sci, Lath is 2nd Mil Sci and GoK is Scribe.

We also decide that Bleyze with rk17 D-flames is a blast mage. Lath with rk18 Whirlwind Vortex is a blast mage. GoK with rk16 Shadow Blades is sort of a blast mage but is also a warrior. Mebh is defiantly a warrior. Eric is a Namer and warrior Villa is an E&E and has many Talents And - finally Pierre is our cook. (thou suspiciously Pierre has the most endurance amour and the biggest sword).

1st - 7th of Thaw

We make preparations at the guild. Pierre our cook, cooks up 20 odd rk9 waters of healing these cost us 8000sp.

GoK contacts Basalic and orders 15 rk13 Strength of Stone on endurance, this costs us a further 19500sp.

Bleyze sells 10,000 sp worth of invested weapon of flames to Mebh

8th of Thaw

Lath takes us out to the sea of grass to participate in a fertility ritual. Which involves drinking, dancing and getting laid.

During one of these three activities when Bleyze has his clothes off he is attacked by two kind of phantasms, killed and torn into little pieces.

Also during one of these three activities while GoK has his clothes off he is attacked by two beautiful elf like women who have lead him off. They leave him alive but his willpower and endurance are drained; His mind is read and he is cursed with a 30+ MA curse. We suspect the enemy now knows all about us. (or atleast as much as Gok knows)

We head back to Seagate, get Bleyze resurrected & GoK kills himself and is resurrected to remove the curse which we suspect is a locate.

We all regenerate 1Ft and 1End per 4 pulses for 1 year as a result of the ritual which it seems even thou we disrupted it with our deaths was a success.

9th of Thaw

The Graff teleports us to a path somewhere far to the north in Alusia where it is freezing. He has warned us not to try flying or teleporting.

We decide to walk west rather than east as it is up hill, and soon we arrive at a horny gate. As we pass through the gate it turns out that several party members have overlooked items which should have been left behind. These items are turned to ash. Appart from this minor setback all feel uplifted and like we are on an important journey.

Soon we arrive at the ivory gate and all pass without too much bother, although Laths permanent illusion is disapated and flames briefly flair around Eric.

Suddenly upon passing this gate we find that we are in a hidden green valley, there are fruit trees and men dressed in white tending stock. Before us some miles hence is a huge triangular wall. The walls are some 600 feet high and the point of the triangle closest to us the back wall is built into the mountains. Each side must be at least 1 mile long.

There is a great door build into the point.

We ring a small bell mounted at the door which makes no noise and sit, soon the door is opened. We claim we are here seeking knowledge and are welcomed inside by Gethin the seneschal who is wearing whiter robes with a silver cord around his waist.

We are shown to a boarding house. All feels beautific, there is no alcohol and no meat sold at the boarding house.

10th - 20th Thaw

We head down and eat a vegetarian breakfast. Spotting a Scholar with a crook 2, Luna researches with 2 Luna Guards and a mad man. We investigate them a little some are mages some are not.

Visit the library. On the door are two guards dressed in unusual armor with unusual cords (with silver threads) wrapped around one arm. We enter and are met by the head librarian, an old man he has white robes with a silver cord tying them together. Perhaps it is pewter that runs through his cord.

The library is huge and a triangle shape which points backwards and fits into half of the rear mountain wall that makes up the back of the city. The door to the library in to the left and is cut into the side of the mountain.

There are constantly a number of librarians around, they do not help to search but will point out which area to search in. Each librarian wears white robes held together with a silver cord. We discover that they all look a lot younger and more mussely in a mirror of true sight. Also the cords do not DA as magical but are in-fact highly magical they prevent magic's such as locate working and they allow the librarians to walk through the many magical doors that we discover are in all the interior walls of the library.

We spend 3 days searching the books for various personal things then we decide to spend another week doing this. Lath searches for a cure to change her true form so that she will have a hand and a workable color bone. GoK searches for the history of his Holy Sword hoping to find a way to unlock its many other abilities and cause it to speak in a more respectful voice to him now that he is no longer a vampire. Mebh searches for warrior abilities, others search for other things.

While this searching is going on some of us explore other things. We find: That the mad man spends days at a time staring at a wall; That outside of the wall there is a small crack in the earth which goes right though to the under city; That the city in under populated for its size; that the inn does not mind if we eat meant and drink wine but will not serve such to us; that there are many magical doors on the back two walls of the library; that the heart of glass is to the right of the library through the right hand side wall; that we can teleport most places safely; that the chief librarian notices almost everything that goes on.

We use a crystal of vision to have a look at the under city, GoK memorizes a location suitable for teleport. From above it looks like a huge triangle pointing the opposite way to the upper city, within it is a second triangle pointing the other way and within this a third triangle point the same way as the first; thus it is divided into 7 triangles with the very centre most forming a temple. We expect that the upper city has the same form so that the city as we know it is only the front most point of a much larger structure (just the tip of the ice burg so to speak), this makes the library a second more central triangle and suggests that through the right wall of the library is a temple (where we think the heart of glass is).

We discover that there are many secrete doors through the 2 inner walls of the library, we are a little wary of teleporting through these walls as we suspect that they may be warded against this kind of entry.

21st - 22nd Thaw

We spend two further days researching and discover: The inn keeper is a normal human, the mad man is blessed by the powers of light and is also quite mad, the inner walls of the library are protected with holy warrior magic (not necessarily POL but holy to someone) we think this will protect from teleport, the Liberians bleed green icor.

Also the party from the Luna Empire is made up of 3 mages (E&E, Mind, Namer) and 6 guards one of which is also a mind mage).

We know that a namer called Astor is also trying to get the heart of glass.

23rd Thaw

At lunch time on the 23rd our scary shields are all disipitated, and Laths mind cloak is also disipitated. We decided that it is time for action. A number of the party were unwilling to take hostile actions against peace loving monks however the fact that they bleed green ichor eases GoK's concerns and the rest of the party seem willing to accept his version of what is right.

We power up in our room and teleport into the library just as the chief Libran is setting the wards for the night. 4 of us over power him and Blaze stabs him with a dart which pulls his skin off his body to reveal many green globes - a trap.

We all back away except Pierre who tries to count the globes but gets dragged by GoK, and Blaze who stabs one of the green globes with a second dart. The green globe explodes and half of blaze is evaporated.

Lath - seeing Blaze evaporated and getting a death buzz... "I think he may not be dead"

10 warriors walk through the wall that we had hoped to pass through they are standing evenly placed along the wall which is 100 feet long. GoK teleports the party to one end to get them lined up, Lath triples a rk18 WV, Killing 1 and stripping 5 others of ftg.

They have javelins which ignore amour and set phantasms into our flesh and the toughest looking one wields 2 flaming scimitars which do circa 30pts of damage per blow ignoring amour.

By the end of the second pulse the party is mostly dead or down. GoK decides it is time to use a talent and reverses time 3 min's.

The party is in the room just after casting buff magic's when GoK receives a spec to his arm with no apparent cause. After a short explanation he teleports the party to some other part of the city.

Mabh is somehow missing and without her "kick in the door" attitude Lath and GoK are unable to convince the others to attack again. We lost our Mojo.

Reflecting on what to do has us leave the city for the night.

24th Thaw

We re enter the city travel into the library Eric and Blaze wait outside while Pierre, Lath GoK and Vila enter and approach the lead librarian. Lath says "we were going to attack and kill you all last night however we have thought better of this and being basically of a good nature we wanted to come clean with you and rather offer a trade for an item we need which we believe to be in your possession."

Librarian (threatening tone) "tell me exactly what you are after". GoK "maybe we should just go back to the idea of killing you all". Lath "we want the Heart of Glass". Librarian "please wait right here while I confer with my colleagues".

The Librarian teleports away. We look around and notice that all of the librarians have left the room seems to darken. One of the other patrons of the Library teleports away, the door slams and the magic which seals it shut is palpable to all of us.

GoK casts teleport at Laths command. Lath and Vila appear outside the Library next to Eric and Blaze. Pierre and GoK appear in a huge darkened room.

Without GoK or Pierre:
Lath and Villa arrive outside with the others. We quickly find that the others and locate the weapon of GoK far below the city before the locate arrow of Villa's is consummed by the green mist. We leave the city thinking that we will summon an air elemental to try to brake/dig/smash into the lower city and recover or friends. Some time goes by ...

Back to Pierre and GoK:
Pierre and GoK power up quickly preparing for anything. We are in a huge room 600' across it is six sided, in the centre filling most of the floor area in a six sided star atop this is a second six sided star and so on; a total of 10 layers of 6 sided stars. At the top is a column of light at each of the points of the 10 stars a heroic looking possibly human or Elf body is chained with grey chains there are green pulsing chaos magic tendrils coming out of the stone and piercing the bodies.

We travel to the top of the dais and find that a beautiful 4 armed woman is chained there. She has a 'greater than Avatar strength' aura and is aligned with natural growth and balance within chaos. The column of light is coming through her and traveling up through the ceiling and into the city above. We ascertain that the 60 men and women chained all around her and this GoD are being used as some sort of power source.

Pierre smashes the chain of a nearby man and GoK then teleports himself and the man to the bottom of the dais where he is free and alive but has many holes where the green pulsing tendrils used to be. Pierre feeds him waters of healing.

Experiencing success buoys us on and so we travel to the top of the dais and GoK attempts to teleport the GoD off the top of the dais and down to where the first freed man is. This is successful except that only half of GoK appears the rest is writhing green tendrils and he is dying. The GoD looks ok except for a shriveled arm.

Acting quickly Pierre uses a potion of complete restoration of GoK and this saves his life.

The GoD restores herself and begins to free and restore her followers. She appears now as a little girl and wants to find her sister. We say we will help and that we can teleport her and 4 of her followers out to the city above where we can join the rest of our party and begin the search for her sister. She holds our hands and we, her and her 60 sleeping followers appear in the Library where the rest of the party is investigating.

Without GoK or Pierre:
In the mean time when the party outside the city was summoning an Air Elemental the ground shakes and the city rumbles for 20 sec, so we stop what we are doing and head inside to the city to find it dark and the walls solid for the first time. We move to the library and as we enter it seems quite. We clearly see that the 'green chaos mist' has eaten away at one wall and we are able to make out what is on the other side, only then to be surprised, by GoK and Pierre and 60 others arriving in the room. Lath is very please and happy to see GoK and Pierre alive and well.

We talk for a moment.

Villa uses a wizard's eye to look through the doorway across the poisonous gas and to the far wall. He then uses crystals of vision to scry through the wall. He sees an enormous triangular room with a 600' 4 sided building in the centre. Surrounding it are 3 large oblong single story buildings pointing towards each point of the triangle. The central building has 4 doors and within is a 6 sided star dais's with 10 levels much like the one below. This one has a dark roiling myst surrounding the top obscuring our view and many men in gold, silver and grey are teleporting away on 4 sigils places around the top of the dais.

We suspect that about 20 men have teleported out while 6 gold clothed and 3 silver clothed men remain around the dais in 3 groups of 3. The gold dressed men are the same as the man who wielded flame writhed swords and struck for 30pts of damage ignoring amour in our first encounter which because of our time traveling talent we did not actually have.

We prepare ourselves for battle.

The Battle

We teleport into the huge chamber and, as expected, find the enemy in 3 groups of 3. However the chamber has some impact on the effects of magic and upon arrival rather than being in a mega hex, as is usual, most of the party members are spread around the southern half of the chamber. We have surprise and in the first pulse blast them with rk17 D-flames, a triple effect rk16 shadow blades - stored in a staff, a rk 16 shadow blades and a rk 18 WV. 5 of the nine go down however two which were wearing white robes are spluttering green gas which seems to be re gathering. As they die their souls (which are visible to Lath and Blaze) are sucked into the centre of the dais - we expect that this is the effect of the Heart of Glass in action and that any who are killed will die permanently in this combat (or at least have their souls stored in the Heart of Glass along with thousands of others)

The last group of 3 run to the portals while Eric leads our warriors in finishing off the last which Mabh knocks out. We are buoyed and somewhat surprised by our success, we have lifted our game a notch since our first ill-fated encounter. Lath calls for us to gather in the South Eastern corner, investigate the top of the dais's and prepare for the next wave.

Eric DA's an apparent wall of force holding a black roiling myst at the top. Perrier throws a dagger into the wall which is destroyed by a tendril of black myst; Vila goes over to the wall and investigates up close and personal.

All the while a screaming has been building in the chamber and it seems to be coming from the two pools of green gas. It is at about the time that Vila arrives at the dais's that two twelve foot tall demons appear from the green gas. They have Vila surrounded. We blast em - but they appear to be immune to magic. Eric and Mabh charge in. The first moves with exceptional speed more much than quickened while the second moves with extreme slow perhaps together creating balance. The first moves to Eric, closes with him strikes him with two claws, which lodge in his chest cavity, lift him up and bite his head.

GoK changes to weapons and move to strike it, Mabh strikes a massive blow, while Lath casts Empathy. Next the demon pulls its claws from Eric causing 4 spec grevs. Hits GoK with Eric, and strikes GoK twice with claws doing 2 spec grevs, GoK goes down beside Eric. Mabh strikes it with a massive blow passes a crystal to Eric and GoK which causes restoration. (Apparently it cost her 5 points of willpower).

We get on our feet as two more warriors appear at each of 4 portals, one with a massive shield and short sword and the other carrying 2 javelins which set phantasms under our amour. A shudder goes through the party.

Lath calls to rally the party and we turn to face the new threat. As GoK, Eric and Mabh finish off the first Demon blast magic's go off Blaze manages to get both demons and every party member save Lath in his D-flames. Lath makes a triple effect WV, and GoK a double effect Shadow blades.

Pierre is matching the second demon toe to toe though it is slow now its companion is dead (we all knew the cook was tuff). As we gain the upper hand on the eight new foe GoK is stuck with a Short sword covered with runes which is realised into his flesh, he manages to save at minus 50% because he has the good fortune to be randomly standing in a Namer counter spell. Blaze removes the short sword saying 'got it' and GoK uses his action to take the short sword and place it in his pack saying 'I'll take that - it looks like loot to me'.

As the second Demon goes down, the GoD appears and goes to the wall of force disipitating it. She then enters the black roiling myst and begins pulling ineffectually at the silver chains holding her brother (the chaos within order aspect of the whole god). Another warrior comes through the portal on the dais's and is immediately evaporated by the black myst.

The party charges around picking up bodies in order to collect the loot. GoK flies up to assist in removing the GoD's brother and does the teleport trick to get the 3 of them up to the northern end of the chamber. As he does so a rumbling sound fills the chamber and some of the roof starts to come down.

Freed the GoD's touch hands meld together and disappear. The party travels to the dais and finds that the Heart of Glass is set as a stone into the top. The party tries various methods of removing it but Eric and Mabh are most effective with Mace and Mattock respectively. GoK teleports the party out of the city .9 of a mile and makes a second leap of .9 miles just to be on the safe side. The city of Silver seems to settle without totally collapsing.

A Repost

Expecting that we have the upper hand we teleport back to the city to recover the holy artifacts rumored to have been horded within. We suspect that they are stored in 3 large bunkers.

Unfortunately we are ambushed and the details of the following combat are too gruesome to detail here. However we escape with our lives barely. Oh except for Mabh who valiantly saves the entire party and gives her own life in the process. Worse - because she dies close to the HoG her soul is trapped within along with countless thousands of others.

We flee to the guild and have a brief encounter with the other party after the HoG from TAC.

note: The Scribe was not actually present during the last section 'A repost'; accordingly the details provided may not actually bare any resembalence to reality and may rather represent a flight of fancy.

25th Thaw

We meet the Graf back in the guild. He is delighted that we have in fact recovered the HoG though he is careful not too show it. He places the HoG into the butt end of an obsidian dagger and stabs Mabh with it she returns to life. In return he would like us to remove his competition from the face of the earth (well not quite).

Astor is a respected surgeon who lives out of Adjepbar. He has made a flesh gholam which is designed to house the soul of an ancient horror currently held within the HoG. The Graff would like us to destroy the flesh gholam and does not mind if we destroy Astor as well.

It turns out that the Illume which attacked and killed Blaze and GoK early in the adventure are assassins in Astor's service.

We spend 8400sp on 35 rk9 water of healing which Pierre prepares; also 25000 on 25 rk8 Gut Busters from slippery rock.

26th Thaw

We travel to Astor's manor. Astor is an ancient namer we know that of the 4 Lillume 1 is a mind mage and 1 is an earth mage we suspect that 1 is an E&E.

We find a 3 story manor on top of a hillock with its back to the cliff face. It is surrounded by a 20' dressed stone wall about 600' on a side. There are 2 guards at the large stone gate and several more on top of the wall. We are careful not to use scrying magics and instead turn into seagulls and fly around the place. We discover that we cannot really make out the manor house - we know it is there but doors and windows are just not evident it's like we cannot target it or really memorize any part of it.

At dusk we fly below the level of the cliff face and up to approach the wall without being seen. Lath triggers several transparencies upon the wall until we can see through. We discover that there is a smooth stone surface, a cold iron inner shell a bound earth core followed by a cold iron shell and a smooth stone surface on the other side. Also there are Specters living within the wall.

GoK tries to teleport the party through the wall using the transparent area to get a lock on the arrival spot the spell works but we do not move. The Specters begin an attack using magic. We fly over the wall and land on the far side. Blaze is trapped by one of the many hands of earth that suddenly appear upon the top of the wall. We are being attacked by many white fire.

The party flies up to the wall of the mannor and Blaze casts fire arc to get in close proximity with them; GoK then teleports the party through a window as the manor is clearly visible from close range.

Once inside we search the place. It appears abandoned. There are stairs down but into a kitchen rather than a basement. In the master bedroom on the second floor we find a painting which teleports Mabh up to the third floor and back. We break a window as the portal only moves 1 person, and fly out and up and land in the third story. It appears that there is a portal of some description on the floor - the whole third story is set up as a workshop.

GoK's Warrior Guide

The six pointed Star on the 3rd floor is indeed a portal to 5 other locations 1 of which is far away and the rest of which are close. One uses the portal by walking along a line. The person gradually disappears over 10 seconds, if one steps off the line during this process one is flung across the room (as in TK rage).

We travel first to a workshop which contains various Alchemist stuff - we are somewhat disappointed that the workshop does not seem to reflect the skill of the Namer we are pursuing. We find a secret door leading from this workshop into the Kitchen. The same 6 pointed star portal is placed upon this floor.

We elect a new direction and Pierre appears in a large square room with a stone gholam manning a ballista fixed to a pivot atop a post in each corner. As he appears he is fired upon by these 4 ballista. It will be 10 seconds before Mabh arrives and 10 seconds more before GoK arrives. We cane their bums.

The room is suddenly shrouded in darkness those of us with rk 20 whichsite cannot see. The 4 lillim appear teleporting in. They are wearing black armour that appears to absorb spells and Attacks (ablativly). They teleport around the room attacking us at random. GoK & Pierre manage to attack two from behind only to find that their cloaks absorb spells and any physical attack pulls one into the void (a fate narrowly avoided). They each have gems which store spells targeted at an entity (such as Laths rk18 WV) to be later fired off like an invested. Mysteriously they disappear, before they kill us.

There is a rumbling sound for several pulses then suddenly 4 armour plated Mammoth gholams appear 1 through each of the four doors. They each have 3 heads 2 of which breath fire. We cane their bums. Though they give us some trouble by closing with us.

We are almost out of healing potions and we are in a rush because our weapon spells are about to run out. We charge off down a corridor making a quick decision at a crossroad. We eventually end up in a small room with 3 pentagon portals in it. however we trigger a ward on the way in and have to destroy 7 spectral hands; these are like hands of earth except they drain and cannot be targeted (except by weapons that can hit insubstantial things).

The first portal leads us to a room with hundreds of dead people in it. they are hanging from hooks in the ceiling and are inscribed with demon symbols meaning that their souls cannot escape, so even though they appear to have been here for some time they could all be resurrected. Blaze and GoK destroy them with spells, deciding there are too many to rescue and they may be put to evil use in the mean time. They are all missing their hands.

The second room is a rk15 Alcamyst lab. Eric is very excited. We quickly exit and enter the third portal.

The third room is a large square room many miles below the mannor above (this is a guess but it feels right). It is lit by a light which nullifies shadows. we all arrive together however in a different order than we went in. between us and the Evil namer and his 4 lillim and their 2 Nightmares are 2 Namer barriers which cause us to have to save twice at -30 or be repulsed taking big damage in the process. In the room is a nearly completed Gholam constructed entirely of the hands of the undying (from the room visited earlier).

The lillim are now wearing red Dragon skin armour with their cloaks they are wielding maingauch and swords. The evil Namer is wearing some dark armour.

In the first pulse GoK and Pierre use 'one use, free pass action' teleport items to teleport to one side of the room through the barriers and into position for casting shadow blades (we have been preparing it as we entered the portal). We know this is suicidal because in the first combat with the Lillim we were struck with darts which did an automatic spec grev if you did not have an E&E special counter on and there are at least 6 such darts floating in the air waiting for targets.

We get our spells off and destroy the Nightmares also some single use magic protection items drop to the ground from the Lillim and the Namer appears annoyed. Then GoK takes 3 Spec Grevs from 3 darts. These remove 1 secondary arm, 1 leg & crush his pelvis. Also his 10pt dragon skin caster/agility armour is destroyed as it took 2 spec grevs earlier. GoK spends the rest of the combat attacking with 1 hand while laying on the ground (in the next 3 pulses he manages to do around 80pts of fatigue damage and this strips the fatigue of 1 of the Lillim.

Mabh and Pierre deal to the Namer Eric eventually does 2 endurance hits with one multi hex strike (against 2 lillim). In short after about 2 hours of play time in which we look like we are loosing we gradually get the upper hand and eventually destroy the Namer and 1 Lillim before the other 3 flee.

We are Victorious.

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