Kanlaoise - Soul Men

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Adventure also known as "Death Remains With You".

Summary

GM Ross
Session: Autumn 821
Night Sun
Location Kanlaoise
Level Yes

Party:

• Sabastian -Mil Sci & Scribe
• Vladimir

Employer:
Shahdad

Mission:

• Release souls trapped by the Master in his pocket planes

Summary

• Requested by agent of Shahdad to travel to Cormelle and recover souls
• Travel to Skys Edge, via Kanlaoise, fight and make new friends

Details

A Surprising Offer

An attractive human woman wearing simple robes turns up at the Detectives agency in Brastor_Township looking for Sabastian, she makes her way unnaturally fast to Sabastians house in Hugler's_Ferry and explains the lady has sent her from Kanlaoise to request assistance to find lost souls. Sabastian agrees and packs up and flys to the guild in Seagate, she is an exceptional flyer, and recruits Vlad to assist.

The Agent explains the Master has recently returned to Cormelle and has a plan, he has created other realms, drawing resources away from Kanlaoise, and she believes souls are not returning to Kanlaoise as they are trapped there. She wishes the souls to be returned by any means possible as they are not following their fates. Shahdad sees the Masters as a parasite and wants rid of him.

Its difficult for people to go there and difficult for anyone to stay in the pocket plane, and Shahdad worshipers are too inflexible in their approach and wouldn't be able to complete the work required. We are warned that its easy-to-get soul back, harder to get bodies back if we fall so we should not take anything that we are not prepared to lose.

Vlad and Sabastian talk it over, and Vlad points out the Agent houses an incredibly powerful soul. He has also heard rumours from Drakenburg of a mass killing, the bodies were unmarked and the souls were missing. Guild Security are exceptionally nervous about the Agent.
We agree to the mission and head off, we secure passage on a boat to Coulder. We travel first class and eat at the captains table, the Agent is quiet for the most of the journey, people keep away.

We fly to the Dragonspine mountains, stopping off in Antropine learning about the mysterious dead. We challenge the Agent and she explains she is Shahdad, people tried to attack her so she took their souls. Her agents don't have enough agency to complete the work, and there are complicated politics going on with Latherin Nithoryn.

Back to Kanlaoise

Arriving late at the mountain pass we stay in a dwarven tavern the night and head up to the monastery the next afternoon and pass through to Kanlaoise. There are fewer monks at the monastery, as the world is opened up, they are travelling.

Shahdad creates coffins for us, which will allow her to secretly delivered us Cormelle, as well as fashioning us goggles, which is like tiny golems, that will allow use to see souls, as well as a bone fluted wand that can be used to ripe souls from bodies. We should appear near an Inn, and we need to travel in the sewer to find a portal to our destination. We are looking for a particular souls, a House leader that conspired with the Lord of Blood and his agents who escaped, his soul was hidden by the Lord of Blood and during the disruption escaped her.
As we prepare Eyebite arrives and taunts us for a while they leaves. As an agent of Akh he is significant more powerful, his station has risen considerably.

We climb into the coffins and feel a powerful magic impact. Climbing out we find ourselves in coffins on the back of a wagon. After we climb out the wagon, and horse hitched to it, age in seconds and turns to dust – its very disturbing. The googles appear to have grown into our heads. The party sneak into the cellar of the Inn and into the nasty, smelly sewer and find the portal entrance covered by a grate, are pull it open and are washed though by the current of the water to the sound of a bell.

New world

Were teleported and find ourselves in a pool of stagnant water that has a black, toxic sheen on the surface. We are in what appears to be a large silo. Anthophorid pigs drop from the ceiling on rope and fire crossbows at us. We struggle to get out of the water to get the walkway around the edge of the room. Vlad casts a modified telekinetic rage that as well as hurting the creatures, fills the air with oily water that then ignites killed our opponents and injuring the part.

Climbing out of the room we discover the room is a basement level. The Pig creatures were living is a partially destroyed building that's littered with he bones of their victims. The have strange ill-fitting plate armour that is incredibly strong, we well as stream powered crossbows. We killed eight of the creatures, it appears two have escaped.

Looking outside we find ourselves in a weird, twisted landscape. The sky is a nasty brown and the light is a mirky twilight. There is rubble of enormous building for about a mile, with creeper covering the rubble. Beyond that are huge buildings that reach the sky, the higher they rise the more twisted and distorted they become, eventually form a canopy about half a mile up covering most of the sky, there are cables extending from the canopy to various buildings.

New Friends

Vlad detects some nearby minds, so we hide and watch. A mechanical vehicle 'drives' up the building we were occupying and a strange group that enter the building we were in, packing contents of the building on their vehicle.

While watching Sabastian find another observer, Sylvest, a young kid with exceptional stealthing abilities. After an initial tense conversation, we make friends with the looters and agree to accompany them back to their camp. They know Sylvest and find him very irritating, we liberate some currently from him – the coins from the canopy have moving illusions on them.

As we journey our new friends explain that a terrible virus swept through their world many years ago, destroying most magical things and twisting the landscape. The canopy is there the rich live in luxury, there are various ways up, climbing the buildings or cables, that have various risk around them.

Finally making our way out of the rubble we find a shanty town heaving with people scavenging their way to get by. We trade for food with the goods looted, and head to Jyms to trade the steam generator, there are miraculous (but fragile) items there.

The live in a makeshift building, its patchwork of masonry and concrete thats secured by huge concrete doors that would be very hard to open. Most of their items are beyond Sabastians mechanical skill. We discover we can both sense death, Shardad has left her mark on us.

Visitors from up top

In the late afternoon we head to the market with Gezer and Bob, its situated in the remains of what looked to be a beautiful piazza. The markets are chaotic with a huge number of stalls, mostly selling food and basic commodities, and entertainers. The smell of bbq rat wafts through the air. Most machinery seems to be powered by gas, there is little coal or wood.

There is a huge mix of people here, of all sizes, speaking a variety of languages. A few of them appear to have strange modifications i.e. horns. Very few large weapons being carried. Gezer knows most people here, appears to be a talented merchant, he speaks a mix of different human languages, often in the same sentence as he trades with a mixture of coins and IOUs. We buy a few oddities what would be incredibly useful for alchemy.

Vlad spots a 'gondola' coming down cable from the canopy to the market place and the crowd appears to get a little tense. Two people emerge from the gondola dressed in strange black clothing; each are accompanied by two horse sized dog that seem to have hard exoskeletons. They head through the market and into the desolation, the people part like the sea in front of them. One of the two appears to have a soul that doesn't fit her body.
We follow the top dwellers at a distance as they eventually make their way through to the building that we emerged from, and send their dogs to track the pigs that escaped. It doesn't take long for the enormous beasts to returned with the pigs in their mouths. Vlad casts mind-speech so we can talk to them at a distance, they don't reply and immediately become hostile – the send the dogs out to hunt us and begin retreating (with one of the live pigs). We use range spells on the dogs to slow them down, and the strangers use area effect disintegrates on us, fortunately they don't know exactly where we are and miss us. We hear a whisper, its Shadad, who tells us she has marked their soul for us to track.

We eventually make our way back to the market and its is empty, people have fled and some things have been destroyed. It appears the strangers took out their frustration on the people here.

Heading to the canopy

Deciding they may return with reinforcements we decide its time to leave, we head into the devastated area, cast wings and fly up into the canopy. We can see the entire area (world) is in a domed off, its about 2km high, and inside a crater. There is a chasm in the middle of the crater and its giving of a smoky gas.

The canopy is composed of warped and chaotic tops of the buildings. Vlad senses many non sentient minds and we climb down through a window into a maze of corridors. We are attacked by dogs sized rats, that we are able to defeat and discover some living people trapped in the walls or their warren (stuck when the warping occurred?). We release their souls.

Sneaking further thought the corridors we're jumped by large spiders, the size of horses. They give us a tough time, poisoning and webbing us. Just as were getting the upper hand the mother spider appears, which is as big as a carriage, we are very concerned. It leaps on Vlad, biting and slashing at him - hes only saved by his amazing magical armour and Sabastians giant spiky caltrop in its mouth that stops it biting. It eventually retreats having taken a fair bit of damage and we are exceptionally relieved. We cast some walls of light behind us and retreat

Fighting

We heal up and explore further, locating a room that appears to be a prison/torture room. We hide when we hear some noise from above, the iris in the ceiling opens and a capsule is lowered through with the two vicious elves and the pig creature. The feed the pig to something in one of the cells so we engage them, the fight makes it way into the capsule and the elves detonate explosive attaching the room to the complex and it fall away from the structure. The capsule is attached to a gondola by a chain and we are left swinging precariously in the air.

With one of the elves dead, the other retreats on wings with Vlad in pursuit. Sabastian staying to loots the body of the dead elf. The fleeing Elf makes it to another platform and fires power light beams at us. We make it to the new platform and destroy the mechanical device firing the beams, only for more explosive go off, injuring us, and we all start falling. We eventually recover and flee.

Spirit Ship

We fly for some hours looking for more signs of spirits. We locate an air ship docked/stuck to a building and fly closer to investigate. The hull of the ship appears to have hundreds (maybe thousands) of spirits embedded into it so we land to investigate and are attacked by two berserking creatures with vicious poisoned claws. We escape and cast of them from the air, only to be struck by blood magic as we are literally turned to pools of blood and it slows drains away as we fall. Sabastian only survives because of stored healing magic. We turn back before we hit the ground, reengaging our wings we land of the side of a building to discuss out next steps

People and Places

People

Skys Edge

Traders;

• Gezer – old human man, leads the group.
• Kitten – Dog sized kitten. Long lived sentient, was trapped in this form during the virus.
• Bob – a Big guy wearing poncho and trousers. Has huge three foot blade thing, and carries a huge buzzing item that seems very dangerous.
• Doc – wearing a weird metal exoskeleton. Clothed, but not fitting with the exoskeleton
• Tats – a woman covered in weird shimmering tattoos that are trying to blend in with the surroundings, occasionally glitched. Has some mechanical triggering devices in her hands. – DA – long lived sentient. College – like illusion, Pacted – No Answer.
• Steam wagon – a mechanical wagon that can follow simple commands. Was highly complex but broke down because of the virus. Is jury rigged to be steam powered.

Others

• Sylves – lives in the luxury of the canopy, slumming it in on the ground level. Wears mater crafted clothes and has highly enchanted items that protect him and offer incredible stealth.

• Jyms – an immoral person with significant influence who runs the largest junk yard in the area. Lots of tinkers working here, children climbing up huge stacks to get things off them. Collection of high tech devices that no longer work due to the virus

• Elves - two elves from the canopy that wearing black leathers and shop contempt for anyone they see.

Places

Skys Edge

Close up

Profile

Use to have buildings that reached high into he sky until a virus struck, destroying most magic and twisting reality. Buildings are twisted and distorted as they reach into the sky, forming a canopy about half a mile up.

Cables extend from the canopy to buildings and the ground. Caravan, that are golems, with four arms what pull themselves along the cables, that are golems.

Calendar

Summer 821wk: Meadow
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Beltane Full Moon		1		2		3		4		5		6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28	Full Moon	29		30		1		2		3		4
Summer 821wk: Heat
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14	Midsummer Eve (Faerie Day)	15	Solstice	16		17		18
	19		20	Shahdad recruits us. Sail to Coulder	21	Sail to Coulder	22	Sail to Coulder	23	Fly to Dragonspine mountains. Stay in Antropine	24	Fly to Dragonspine mountains.	25	Kanlaoise->Skys Edge. Fight pigs. New friends.
	26	Full Moon	27		28		29		30		1		2
Summer 821wk: Breeze
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	3	Day of Death	4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30