Okay, here we are, on my ongoing trek to get caught up on my session write-ups. This one wraps up the eighth 'episode' and kinda starts the ninth, hence the overlapping tags.
First, here's a quick reminder that I recently did a Pathfinder character write-up elsewhere on my blog, for those of you who prefer your fantasy with d20s instead of d10s.
Second, and more importantly, I'm also looking for some feedback on stuff about the blog in general.
And with that...
...we pick up with the group back in the chamber with the pit. It's hard to see anything down there, and after some joking that became a serious suggestion, Stray Dog Serenade casts Flight of the Brilliant Raptor, launching the flaming bird into the pit. They get a glimpse of bridges and ledges and crevices -- the pit isn't open all the way down, but get a glimpse of what might be a quicksilver lake. It's tough to tell just how far down it is, though odds are that safe descent will probably take at least a few hours, with no easy path back up.[0]
Confident that whatever's down there isn't likely to be an immediate threat, they take a moment to make sure everyone's okay before getting back to searching for the Star Taker. Fortunately, Stray Dog's entourage have been taking notes just in case the tunnels do move around, and they use that as a reference to retrace their steps to back where they first met 'Zephyr.' From there it's not too much longer of going through tunnels, using the lantern and their Caste marks for light, until they find a ruin.
The ruin is a series of chambers, including a large one with a dome-shaped ceiling. It's partially lit by what look like sheets of glowing mold growing from what were once tapestries, revealing more of those lizard and sun glyphs.[1] Contributing to the dim light is a machine in the middle of the largest chamber holding a starmetal orrery. According to the materials supplied to or collected by Lecht, this the Star Taker -- it starts as an astrolabe but can unfold into a spindly orrery, a little like a Hoberman sphere designed to fold up flat. It's rigged into a machine that's channeling power -- presumably Essence -- through it, left to run alone down in the tunnel.
The Zephyr-creature seemed to think it was him for at least part of their interactions, so now that they see it they think they can take it/him at face-value about not being able to figure a way to free the Star Taker from the mechanism.
Speaking of which, in one corner of the chamber the group finds the remains of a base camp. There's no body, but they find clothing, a bedroll, a few days worth of 'hard tack'-style rations, journals, and a very distinctive crutch. There are also signs of a struggle and traces that suggest a body was dragged out of there. A quick skim of Zephyr's journal all but confirms their suspicions -- Zephyr was taken and consumed, possibly by that quicksilver lake or some other monster in the tunnels, and a simulacrum was produced whose memories 'began' right at about the point Zephyr was taken.
In the journal Zephyr talks about his analysis of the hieroglyphs and the machine, and his conclusions that he couldn't remove it on his own without help or risking damaging it. He was planning to go back into the city and find someone to go back down with him, but couldn't find his way out -- there are several entries describing his difficulties navigating, particularly feelings of disorientation and suspicions that the tunnels were rearranging themselves. He could find his way back to the Star Taker, but actually escaping the tunnels was beyond him.
First involves some research and math -- Zephyr believed that understanding the workings of the machine required study of the local dragon lines and Essence flows. Lecht and Stray Dog manage to collaborate to work out his methods and formulas, and how it fits together into the machine's workings, only to discover that Zephyr actually screwed it up. While an experienced adventurer, he wasn't a career academic and so he messed up some translations and made some faulty assumptions about the state of the dragon lines. After that, with the help of Stray Dog and his 'second skin' living demon armor (who's good with translations), it's a simple enough matter to fix the translations and recalculate the geomancy -- and, in the process, discover that the reason he couldn't get out is because his incorrect tinkering with the mechanism scrambled his sense of direction.
But now that they have a working understanding of the 'science,' (enough that maybe a cleaned-up and edited version might be worth something to a collector) they can start disengaging the safety locks on the device. Both Stray Dog's expertise and Wandering Dawn's motor skills are more than handy here, helped with possible flashes of a long-gone past giving them instincts regarding this old tech. They're able to undo most of the fastening mechanisms, kinda like opening up a massive puzzle box, with even a little surge of Essence flowing into Stray Dog to replenish some of what he's spent.
And soon enough, with Lecht channeling their power to direct the Essence flow and sever the proper connections, they're able to remove the orrery from the device. It then begins to retract and fold up into the easily-portable astrolabe form of the Star Taker, though it does turn and tick on its own for several moments before switching off.[2] But with that, Lecht's business is concluded in Gethamane and all they need to do now is get the Star Taker back to Nadia, and so the group just needs to get back to the city and eventually the surface.
They get back late, and Wandering Dawn recognizes he has to apologize at the tavern, but he should do it in the morning. So they just turn in as Oguri packs up her wagon, apparently having completed most if not all of the business she had to do in the city under the mountain.
As Wandering Dawn sleeps, he has a dream of being back down in those tunnels, of seeing an old woman walking around in them, trailing wet black footprints. She turns to him and hisses that it will come for him, come for all of them because of him. He has to leave, and warn the Deliberative.
He wakes up. It's a little early for him, not quite dawn yet, but he cleans up, checks on his familiar, and he goes down to the tavern to find Stray Dog and Lecht -- neither of whom really needs sleep, due to various powers -- still going over what they found in the ruins. He walks up like he's on something, and he pulls up a seat.
He starts by asking them about what that machine was doing with the astrolabe. Lecht says as near as they can tell, it was just tracking the Heavens in some fashion, and Dawn confirms that's all, that it wasn't producing a barrier or anything. He then tells the others about the dream, and said that the old woman in the dream made him think of the creatures they fought, and that she warned him that whatever was down there was coming up because of something they did[3], and that they needed to war the Deliberative, whomever they are.
Lecht, somewhat dismissively, suggests that maybe it's a dream of a past incarnation, that maybe Wandering Dawn had some past experience in Gethamane that he's recalling. But he gets in real close and, somewhat agitated, says that he's never had a dream about any of his past lives. For all he knows, he's the first of his Exaltation, but his instinct's telling him that either they woke something up or there was something down there they missed and now it's a danger to more than the adventurers that wander down into the tunnels.
Lecht points out that as far as they know, the 'Deliberative' means the ruling body of the Realm, who are far away and not likely to care. Wandering Dawn suggests this thing might be a threat to the entire region. Lecht is sure it's just a dream -- they're not trying to discount what Wandering Dawn is telling them, but he needs to tell them what he's planning to do about it.
He wants to go back down there and destroy whatever's down there, but it might not be something the three of them can deal with. He and Lecht ask Stray Dog what he thinks, and he says they can certainly go back down there if it means putting Dawn's mind at ease. Lecht says someone will have to keep an eye on the astrolabe, and Stray Dog offers the use of his entourage to keep an eye on it if they leave it back with the wagon. Which, as part of their caravan, will likely also have the protection of Oguri, her strange foreign bodyguard Mahi, and/or the foxfolk Dragon-Blood Kasyan depending on who's around.
At about this point, a city official walks up to the trio with a woman from the guard. He asks the group how they're doing, how they're enjoying the city, that sort of thing. Lecht says it's a fine city, while the others give noncommittal grunts because they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dawn asks if they can help him, and he says they actually can. He says that he's aware that adventurers sometimes go down into the tunnels and being back treasures, and he was suggesting maybe they could kick in a little something for the city.[4]
Wandering Dawn asks if he missed a fee, and Baykal asks "Did you?" and Dawn says he needs to know outright. Lecht chimes in and convinces him that they didn't find anything but they were planning another trip down. He accepts that as he just lets them know the city expects a share of anything brought back, and introduces himself as Baykal before he goes to leave. On his way out, Lecht mutters something under their breath that I apparently didn't write down, but the guy just stops and smiles back at them and wishes everyone a pleasant day and safe explorations.
And we leave off there.
[0]-- Unfortunately none of my players clearly remember them, but my mental image is something like the old blue and purple 'layer cake' cave maps from City of Heroes, and I'm having trouble finding a proper screenshot at the moment to use as an example.
[1]-- While they poked around and explored the handful of chambers, Stray Dog quietly tapped into the demonic collective subconscious to help him interpret the hieroglyphs, learning about their connection to the Dragon Kings, a prehuman Sun-worshipping civilization who apparently built these ruins and used the Star Taker to study the heavens somehow.
[2]-- Okay, so, I treated removing the Star Taker as a venture, something like an 'extended action' in other systems though a little more complex. In this case, each roll (which was a teamwork roll) was an obstacle -- understanding Zephyr's notes, retranslating Zephyr's notes, disengaging certain mechanisms without it blowing up, and then actually removing the thing without damaging it. Each roll had potential extra benefits if they got more than the required amount of successes, like the extra mote Stray Dog got back. The last of those benefits involved the artifact astrolabe 'calculating a positive destiny' for the group, basically giving them 'banked' stunt dice to represent that even if they're not consciously aware where this run of good luck comes from.
[3]-- Technically, she never said it was because of something the group had done. See, this is a thing that happens in Gethamane, is people have weird dreams there sent by mysterious beings for mysterious reasons. Exalted, in particular, get this sort of treatment to various degrees. If the other two had properly slept they'd have probably had a similar dream, and this was actually me just trying to sprinkle some Gethamane weirdness into things -- I never meant it to become a full story on its own, but I'm all too keen to lean into it when a player gets a wild hair.
[4]-- Gethamane tends to informally tax treasure hunters who go down into the tunnels and survive to tell about it. If the treasure hunter's a citizen, they're outright taxed a portion of their findings, but they're a little more roundabout with outsiders to make sure the city gets its 'share.'
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