A Walk in the Black Forest

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: A Walk in the Black Forest
GM: Jim Arona
Season: Summer 814 wk
Night: Wednesday
Level: Medium violent

Party

• Boris (m) the Orc, Necromancer Scrivener, Embalmer & Coroner played by Mike Haycock
• Mr Morden (m), long-lived shadow weaver and combatant played by Paul Schmidt
• Yoko (f), phantasmal vorpal warrior played by Audrey Schmidt
• Bishop (m) warrior-priest of the wild west played by Jason Stevens
• Dellith (f) human warrior namer played by Clare
• Rahne (f) a Spell Blade. Akinrosi (human from Kinlu), E&E, Warrior. Played by Stephen
• Gard (m) tattooed elder from the dark jungles played by Chris R.

Employer

Vice Admiral Rolland, RN

Mission

Journey to the Schwarzwald on New Terra and rescue a deep cover agent.

Pay

80,000 sp in diamonds + salvage

Scribe Notes

Crossing Victoria

Travel via Kerberoth (to acquire supplies) to the home of Vitri, Lord of Glass in Venice, Victoria.

Two days by train to Paris, overnight then by train to Antwerp.

Hire ship to cross to London, handsome-cab to the station.

Streets and station watched by 'spirit snakes'. We wait in station pub, blending with locals. Patrons are Soldiers and accompanying women, the women all leave about 8:30 and the soldiers suddenly freeze, out of time? about 9pm. A while later a run runs down the stairs into the station and falls dead, poisoned. Shortly a couple of the Lord of Serpent's basilisks arrive and throw his body onto the tracks then stay and keep watch - we freeze like the soldiers any time they look our way. Later a trio of Cenobites arrive, we check our mind shields and continue to wait.

A few minutes before midnight we make our move, donning armour, applying spells and then crossing the platform to where the train will come. The basilisks and Cenobites become aware of something happening, Yoko distracts them and draws most up the stairs, the more powerful basilisk stays, assuming high station I encourage him to ignore this distraction and protect his master which he does. The Cenobites have called the Jackals of Twilight and set them to find the intruder and are surprised when the hounds charge past them back towards us. Morden and Dellith engage the previously distracted basilisk, the rest of us add ranged attacks and move to help. I blind most of the hounds with a flash of light, Yoko destroys several, I reach the fight just before the basilisk is dispatched then loudly suggest that Morden remove his mind shield and share his insanity which he had just so ably demonstrated in combat with the basilisk. The Cenobites open a wormhole and leave. We slay the Jackals before their vision returns and Boris seals up the stairs with bones. Then we wait for the train...

The Lord of Serpents arrives before the train, the walls slow him down but he steadily poisons them and approaches. Morden moves to engage and distract him to buy us time to get on the train, we board, Morden approaches death several times as he taunts and attempts to redeem the serpent then breaks free as the train pulls out. We snag him with ropes and magic and pull him aboard.

Aliens in Gotham

The train travels to Gotham on New Terra, the only other passenger eventually releases his death grip on his seat and talks to us. He is from Gotham and was intending to travel to London to get away from the aliens that have infested Gotham but the infestation of serpents in London is just as bad. He know intends to stay on the train as it travels back and forth until one city of the other becomes safer or he starves, and he'll pay handsomely for delivered food.

We rest and prepare ourselves for Gotham, invisibly we emerge from the train and make our way to the streets. We see the insectile aliens everywhere picking off the residents who are steadfastly trying to ignore them, we make our way towards David's tower only to find it's not there.

Dellith spots a Sun Dancer moving through the streets spreading beauty and sanity, they chat and after completing her task by passing two seeds to Morden and Yoko, the Sun Dancer invites the ladies to have tea with her, the men are to wait outside. She tells us that David left a few weeks ago, taking his ship to intercept an asteroid ship that was approach from the orbit of Uranus. The aliens started becoming a problem soon after that. The status of the Lord of the Swarm is unknown. We ask about alternate sources of dirigibles to get to Schwarzwald, she suggests asking the British Consul though getting to him may be a problem.

A local cab takes us to near the consul but won't enter the killing ground around it. Morden purchases his vehicle, we prepare ourselves, then cram in and Bishop drives us towards the gates. We are assaulted by the aliens and fight them off while Bishop drives on. We make it but the cab is destroyed and we have a few serious flesh wounds to bandage up.

We ask for the consul and are met by Vice Admiral Roland who tells us their spy has uncovered important information, they would like us to contact the spy get an update and investigate further. Boris performs a religious observance in the Consul's small cemetery. He will arrange travel documents and an air craft to fly us to Europe, the only issue is that the air field is outside of the city and the city is under martial quarantine. We decline their suggestions of crawling through the alien infested sewers and experimental spring loaded chairs to catapult us out and go with out own plan. Yoko turns most of us into kitchen utensils, Dellith invisibly flies out carrying us - this works.

At the airfield we meet our inebriated Irish pilot and the British aide who is working on our papers. Morden shanghais the aide to incentivise him to ensure the papers are up to scratch, Boris gives the pilot a sobriety draft and we take off. It is a long flight over the ocean with stops in Spain and France (where we leave the aide) before heading for Munich for the beer festival, we bail out of the plane before dawn over the black forest and then make our way on foot to the castle where our contact should be.

We arrive near the village in the late afternoon, Boris performs a religious observance in the village cemetery, a few of us listen in on local conversations at the village pub. In the evening we make our way stealthily towards the castle, now a hunting lodge for holidaying students, and spy through windows until we spot our contact. In disguise I enter and invite him out to come to the aid of my mistress, there we reveal ourselves, exchange code words and he tells us of the activities of a cult that is moving a lot of mad scientists, troops and supplies to the south pole. He would like us to investigate what they are up to. We discuss options and decide the best way would be to go to our pilot in Munich, fly to the Falkland Islands where we'll meet a dirigible to fly us to Argentina where we can hopefully pick up one of the supply ships and follow it to their base in the South Pole. We agree to look into the cult and he returns to drinking at the lodge.

While we have been in this area, Yoko has been able to scent Black Lead which is extremely rare and valuable for its properties against immortals. And we detected a couple of discrepancies, our contact showed some sort of shrouding in his aura and I sense he is of detrimental value to society - not what I would have expected. Bishop reminds us that we met with Admiral Roland both on Alusia and in Gotham and the tasks the two of them asked of us were slightly different. He believes the British intelligence network is compromised and that we are being deliberately diverted away from what is important here and that the Cenobites we encountered in London are probably involved.

Lead Shipment

Morden consults the stars sees the involvement of an old serpent and devilish creatures, and is certain that Colonel Turner is a double-agent working for Britain and the Cult of the Hold Vehm, he advocates immediate murder or at least abstraction and questioning. He eventually convinces a majority of the party to go along with this then sneaks into the Colonel's bedroom, saps him and brings him out. In the forest, Boris examines him and informs us of two foreign objects in his abdomen, then opens him up to show us. One is a crystal radio connected to his heart ad we believe it is set to transmit a signal after his heart stops. The other is a hexagonal shape that softly expands and contracts and is connected to his blood flow and spine. After lengthy discussion and non-invasive investigation which doesn't get us very far, Bishop attempts to disable the radio - a simple process that goes catastrophically wrong, kills the colonel and activates the hexagonal device which opens and reveals or activates a small wormhole. Morden releases his captured Purple Worm into the wormhole. Boris questions the corpse to confirm some of our suppositions. Bishop attempts to move the wormhole which only serves to shred the container and the Colonel's corpse. While considering other options we spot the worm returning, now glowing Cobalt Blue. Morden and Bishop have experience with this sort of thing and expect it to explode shortly after it arrives, devastating a few miles radius.

Morden captures us in his mirror, drinks my potion of distance ignorance and strides off to the south, where Bishop says there may be lead mines. In the hills about 20 miles away, Morden releases us and we take cover as the explosion goes off.

Morden and Yoko take advantage of the effects of the potion to scout around and sniff out the source of the Black Lead then transport us to near it. The mine entrance is fenced with guard towers and we estimate about 600 guards (3 shifts of 200), it appears to be operated by slaves with short life expectancies. We find a ventilation shaft and make our way down, we carefully sneak through the mine, find the working face, carefully extract 5 lbs of the raw black lead, observe a lot of blood from the slaves at the mine face, and then start making our way out after we hear alarm sirens start up. Once outside we observe them loading guards into trucks and driving out, they appear to be responding to the explosion which I confirm by tracing a truck.

We want to trace what they do with the ore so we settle in to wait and soon see a dirigible approaching, it descends into the camp, is loaded with a lot of raw black lead then departs southwards late in the day. With most of us packed up as kitchen utensils, Morden follows the dirigible for a while then leaps on board and sneaks into the superstructure to find a hiding spot.

We hide in the vessel for 12 days while it travels south, stopping 3 ties to resupply. We deduce it is heading to the south pole (Turner was telling us at least partial truths) and Morden sneaks out at the stops in Africa to acquire fresh food and furs for colder weather. At the last stop they also load tonnes of water and fly much lower as they cross the southern sea and the polar ice.

Eventually, in the constant night and lethal cold of the polar winter we come to a lit camp. It is fenced with watch towers but we notice that the fence is Hexagonal as are the towers. Packing us up again, Morden leaps off and dashes into an unlit building before he freezes. The building is an engineering shed but it has a stove which Yoko gets going to warm the room. We watch while they unload, blocks of ice and the ore all going to the larger buildings on the edges of the camp, people heading to the smaller internal buildings. We observe the camp for two days while the dirigible is anchored and then loaded with smaller cargo - presumably the refined black lead. We see frozen figures of disturbing geometry in the stone and Yoko smells hounds around the camp, we guess they are Corner Dogs - hence the protective or containing hexagons. People in the camp don't usually venture outside, enclosed tubes connect the personnel buildings with the manufactories.

We sneak back aboard the dirigible before it departs. As it lifts off we see that there is a layer of ice covering a rocket silo. We deduce it is a weapon to destroy David when he returns in his flying tower, we mention David by name to warn him but decide we need to take the dirigible then return and take the camp to stop them using the weapon.

Taking the Dirigible

We prepare for combat while we wait for the ship to get out of communications range of the base camp then make our way down to check out the cargo. It turns out to be a large amount of refined black lead and some flasks of amorphous water. We take a small amount of lead each and make our way towards the crew quarters.

Stealth and charm work well for us, only the bridge guard resists and is killed in combat. Our new friends turn the ship around to head back to the camp.

Then we find out about the transuranian on board, he senses us coming and combat ensues. We manage to defeat him but Boris is snap-frozen by one of the amorphous water flasks, Yuko manages to rapidly heat him without killing him but a lot of his equipment is damaged.

Rocket Silo

Our crew fly us back to the camp where we circle around and anchor beyond the ridge. Wearing the cold weather gear we trudge to the ridge and over then make our way towards the iced-over pit where the rocket is. On the way we notice that there is an area of magical warmth along the ridge line, this combined with the geography make the area of the camp warmer than it would otherwise be.

At the silo we find an external door and make our way in past store rooms where Boris finds medical supplies and an antidote to a specific disease. Then through an empty control room to the stairs, most of us sneak down the stairs while Morden shadow walks Boris down to cover the other exit. We attack the workers who mostly surrender once the guard and senior engineers are dead.

Investigating we find Corner Dogs in sealed octagonal crates and frozen (disease affected) zombie-like soldiers awaiting loading into the rocket. We also find comatose Blood Wolves connected to a device that seems to have been draining and refining their blood - we take their stock of potions before destroying the wolves with a silver soul sword.

Investigations complete we make a plan to flood the silo with the rocket fuel and ignite it with flares as we flee. We are making our way up the stairs while Morden ad Yuko break open one of the fuel pipes when we hear soldiers coming down the stairs with another Transuranian. Either we're very unlucky or we triggered an alarm somewhere.

Destruction

Morden and Yuko finish their job (finding there was a portal to transuranic space beneath the rocket) and teleport to meet us at the top of the stairs. We charge up the stairs to engage the soldiers as the only other way out is through the entire complex.

The transuranian floats down the central column of the stairs attacking us with mind magic, the soldiers fire cold rays from weapons powered by the amorphous water. We take a lot of damage but recover and slay the soldiers though not before one of them completes his Pure Heart Charm and rips Bishop's head off. Morden and Yuko see our peril and ambush the transuranian with magic which sends his flambé'd body plummeting to his death.

Removing dangerous artefacts and weapons from their bodies we set the flares and make our way out - it doesn't ignite.

Heading back we debate options, Morden find the flight plan of the rocket - towards a secret base on the moon, then we open the other fuel pipes, exit, drop a flare through the ice and flee. The explosion is as big as we could hope and blasts back through the complex too.

Leaving our prisoners to fend for themselves in the ruins we head back towards the dirigible at a rapid pace that changes to hurried shadow walking when we hear howling on the winds.

Safely aboard we fly north. 15 days and several refuelling stops later we arrive in Britain where we conceal the dirigible and contact the Admiralty.

We brief the admiralty on what we know of the Holy Vehm, their base, Zombie-soldiers, the antidote, the moon base but don't mention the black lead or that we have a dirigible. They pay us and share information. We work out that there is a void cruiser in orbit around the moon, probably the one that was crashed into the sea near Gotham a while ago. Somehow it has been repaired and re-crewed.

We then send messages to the Lords of Rings and Metals informing them we have a valuable resource to trade and arrange a meeting point. 3 days later the Lord of Rings arrives, we retire to a private room and tell him of the Black Lead, suggest some targets, and negotiate recompense. Rings tells us of events in Tanuel. A new shadow-maze has formed between the paths of the dead and Tintagel and Ungoliants brood have emerged from it, the Tintagelites and Kerberites have abandoned the Keep of faces to defend Tintagel. Dantalion has taken the keep and has called in Seir who is bringing his two mountains closer together.

We discuss at length how to get the Black Lead off New Terra to where it can be best used - unable to use any Immortal based means of travel and not especially wanting to go through Gotham, Victoria, or Malkuth. We are almost settled on having to take the void cruiser when I realise we could get Yuko to itemise it all to render it safe to handle then the Lord of Rings can transport us all.

Buffs & Mil Sci

Long Term (assumed always on)

Magic (caster)	Rk	Effects	Dur	Bi	Bo	De	Ga	Mo	Ra	Yo
				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Greater Enchantment (Ra)	17	+18% on all of (R)esistance, (M)agic, (S)kills & Stats, (C)ombat	Season	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Short Term

Magic (caster)	Rk	Effects	Dur	Bi	Bo	De	Ga	Mo	Ra	Yo
Protective Scales (Bo)	14	Absorb 48 physical damage	24 min
Wraithcloak (Bo)	12	20% Def +13% Stealth -4 dmg	6.5 hrs
Enchant Armour (Ra)	10	+22% Def 2ap vs Phantasms/Nightmares	5.5 hrs
Enchant Weapon (Ra)	10	+11% SC +5 Damage	15 minutes

Spell Racks

Standard contents of spell racks:

?

?

Watch Order

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Dellith		Rahne				Boris				Dellith
Bishop			Gard			Morden			Yoko

Awards

Experience

After the Loot Auction:
Income (less expenditures):

Treasure

Treasure Master List

Item	Qty	Effects	Bi	Bo	De	Mo	Ra	Yo	Used
Consumables
Potion of Strength of Stone	8?	EN Buff	1	1	1	1	1	1	2
Amorphous Water Balloons	35	Hyper-Freezing Grenadoes	3	0	3	25	3	3	1
Cobalt Chaos Grenadoes	3				1	1	1
Potion of Greater Healing	15	Heal 3rD10 + 12 EN & 8 FT	3	3	3		3	3
Refined Wolf Potions	24		4	4	4	4	3	4	1
Counterspell Potion	3	Branch Counterspells			3
Phial of Poison Inversion	6	Invert Poison effects	1	1	1	1	1	1
Sanctuary Potion	1	Contagious Honour					1
Poisons
Blade Venom of the Marsh Cobra	3	Halve PS, MD, AG, EN.				3
Bullet Venom	4	D10/pulse x 3	2			2
Other Consumables
Raygun of Cold	4	Rk 15 Cold Ray, uses A.Water	1	1			1	1
Nazi Zombie Retro-Virus	36		1	4	1	1	1	1	27
Pure Heart Charm	3	x10 PS for 15s.			1
Weapons
Dusk Blades & Sheath	1	3 throwing blades per dusk.						1
Viridian Wing	1	As Main-Gauche+						1
The Bonesaw	1	Healer weapon		1
Armour
Fur Coat	3
Snakeskin Leather Jacket	1	3 lbs 7 AP 3 MagProt	1
Miscellaneous
Transuranian Pocket Robe	1	10 pockets					1
Tranuranian Belt	1	Reduces weight to 1/3rd					1
Crown of Mentacles	1						1
Crown of Telepathic Mentacles	1		1
Severe	1	Compel for pass actions			1
Crane Embroidery	1	Crane Transformation					1
Blank Phylactery	4?
A Stone from a Plover's Nest	4?				1		1
Jewellery
Ring of Protection	1	-10 MR dm, 7 AP / pulse ablative				1
Equestrian Brooch	1	Mounted bonuses					1
Sun Brooch	1	Absorbs light		1
Incantations
TK - Triple Strength	1						1

Calendar

Summer
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Beltane
Meadow (1)
			1	Guild Meeting	2		3		4		5	White Lotus	6	Seagate Light Festival
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14	New Moon	15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28	Full Moon	29		30
Heat (2)
							1		2		3		4	Seagate Guildmasters Ball
	5		6		7		8		9		10	Seagate Races	11	The Duke of Carzala's Summer Ball
	12	New Moon	13		14	Midsummers  Eve  (Faerie Day)	15	Solstice	16		17	Seagate Summer Fair Day	18	Seagate Summer Fair Day
	19		20		21		22		23		24	The Castellan of Brastor's Summer Ball	25
	26	Full Moon	27		28		29		30
Breeze (3)
											1		2
	3	Day of Death	4		5		6		7		8		9
	10	New Moon	11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24	Full Moon	25		26		27		28		29		30