Still getting caught up, yadda yadda. I actually started this right after finishing typing up the previous post, which is funny. Then I got held up. So anyhow, that gives me an excuse to properly plug the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide, which is out now on DriveThruRPG! Also, another book I worked on, Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God for Exalted 3rd Edition, goes into crowdfunding on either November 12th or 14th, and I'll certainly have a link in the show noteson here when that begins.
I'll try to get them in without interfering too much with getting caught up on the updates, but I've been planning on doing a couple of Alchemical character builds for the blog -- a couple of characters first written up in ExEss, and then once the relevant preview manuscripts are out for the core system, I'll do core versions for them.
Anyhow, with that out of the way...
We pick up where the last post left off, with the freed susurrus lunging for the group, forced to materialize by the exorcism.[0] Stray Dog tries to grab it with his telekinesis, pantomiming gripping it, but it's like trying to hold onto a river and between the sheer force of it and its fluid nature, it manages to slip free. Wandering Dawn's still got his magically-generated firewand out so he blasts it to try and get it to burn, but it doesn't quite catch.
Lecht calls upon entropic energies and, perhaps fittingly for the expert, manages to get a solid hit on it with Crypt Bolt. Mahi dashes in, sword at the ready, and she ducks in low and comes up spinning the blade like a buzzsaw. It's at this point when Lecht can spot the Caste Mark, and mutters to themself "Of course there's another one." (I'm assuming they meant another Exalt, as I'm reasonably sure I haven't had an Abyssal show up on-camera during this chunk of the story except for Mahi.)
The various mortal sidekicks -- Wandering Dawn's wolverine, Mollie, and Stray Dog's honor guard -- rush in to help combat the thing, and manage to actually get a few hits on it.
Wandering Dawn dismisses the firewand and replaces it with a direlance of light, much like the red jade one he doesn't want to have to take the time to summon. He channels the power of the sun to show him the way, and goes in to strike with all of his strength. His golden anima blazes around him and the spear pieces it like the first rays of morning, causing it to burn and smoke and shriek in countless overlapping voices as it dissolves. He whips the spear around to brush away the little remaining wisps like dust in the wind.
"Well, the plan was to wait until the sun came up," Lecht commented.
Wandering Dawn nods. "It did."
Lecht adjusts their robes and tries to get comfortable because they're still cold from the frostbites. Wandering Dawn moves closer, since his anima banner makes him pretty warm. As much as Lecht would like to camp out by the fire for a few hours or wait to see if the sunrise chases away the chill, Gillian said there were others who went up into the mountains with her. They say the others don't have to come along, but they should at least go up there to make sure they're laid to rest, as they're likely dead or possessed.
"Just once, I'd like to fight something that can appreciate our quips and banter," Stray Dog sighs.
The group gets ready to head up into the mountains to find Echo Gorge. Mahi and Stray Dog's entourage stay behind -- both to make sure the caravan is protected, and also because if they go up and there is a shadowland, they'll likely be stuck there until morning and Stray Dog doesn't isn't sure how well his guys will handle that. Wandering Dawn rides Mollie, though.
The nearly-full moon, just starting to wane, shines down to light the way. Clouds blow in front of Luna's face in the intense wind of the night, as if they're trying to deflect the light and separate the group from the stars above. As they go down the path, they see the sign indicating the presence of Echo Gorge, with a warning nailed on about how dangerous it is past that point. As they pass in front of the sign the text changes for the audience's sight with a belated[1] title drop...
"Freezing Below"
As they approach the site, the group can see the signs of a shadowland -- there's a subtle shift to the plants and berries, as leaves take on sharp edges and the berries change to unnatural colors even as the plants themselves look scrawny and scraggly. The sounds of nighttime animals fade the further they go, replaced with the haunting howls of wind through the mountain pass. The clouds above get thicker, cutting off more of the moonlight as they reach the crater.
The remains of Echo Gorge stand before them. There are still ruins and bits of old buildings surrounding a crater of rubble, like something opened up, consumed the town, and chewed it up. Cart tracks lead down into the crater, towards a hole like a mine shaft that someone has excavated.
"You see that?" Lecht asks, pointing at the tracks. "That is precisely where someone did something very stupid."
Stray Dog chimes in. "And we're about to follow them."
"It's okay when we do stupid things," Wandering Dawn insists. "It's us."
Lecht disagrees, and calls out to anyone who might be listening. A trio of ghosts -- two old women, one of whom has a bunch of rocks sticking out of her collapsed skull, and a young woman come out of the ruins to approach.
"Greetings, Grave Warden," the more presentable of the older ghosts says. "You were foolish to come here."
"Vesmara trained me well for these situations," they insist.
The ghost introduces herself as Yulia, and the one with stones in her head as Varya. The young woman with them is called Gray Laughter. Lecht asks if she calls herself that, and Yulia says she doesn't call herself anything. Lecht asks whether they're old or young, and Yulia says age doesn't matter -- but they've been here a long time.
Lecht asks if someone's been excavating, and Yulia confirms that with a sigh (though the sigh seems more rehearsed than natural, like there's a deliberate attempt at a human gesture). Lecht asks about the susurrus, and she says it's made up of bits of the people killed in the calamity. Some of the ghosts can keep it warded away by now, but it comes and goes. But the people excavating -- and the ghosts don't know who they are -- definitely stirred it up and let loose the frostbites.
Lecht asks about what's down in the caves beneath the town, and Varya says "our deaths."[2] Then she takes a metaphorical step back from the dramatic response and says that sometimes people come in exploring and looking for what fell from the sky to destroy the town, but usually they wind up being possessed and puppet-ed out by the susurrus (which inevitably comes back, though the ghosts don't know whatever happened to the human it rode out).
With that in mind, Lecht asks if everyone's ready to climb into the scary hole, and Stray Dog asks what's the worst that can happen. "Horrible death," Lecht matter-of-factly points out.
So the group follows the tunnel excavated, seeing where two lines of wooden planks have been set down as track for a cart so it can more easily get over the loose stone under their boots. They follow it down to a cavern with a large metal structure with a hole long-ago opened in the side. The structure is big enough they can only see part of a wall taking up one side of the chamber, and it looks like part of a ship hull, albeit a metal one.
Lecht takes a look around the outside -- they can sense traces of magic in the structure, but not something that's survived the centuries. They can also sense at least one ghost in the vicinity. They refuse to lead the way inside, as they're not 'the brave one.' Wandering Dawn draws that red jade direlance and he leads the way into the hole. They find what's clearly sort of base camp for the people who came down here, including the cart wheeled down on the portable track.
The Circle go a little further in, and from the inside it's pretty clear that this is, or was, some sort of ship. The fact that it came out of the sky combined with the materials reminds them of something like the Haslanti air boats they saw near Gethemane, but clearly of different construction.[3]
The place is also full of skeletons, possibly of people who were on the ship when it crashed. Someone's moved them off to the side but carefully positioned them in repose. Obviously they didn't want to haul the corpses out, but they at least made sure they weren't left strewn around.
There are stairs leading up and down, and the group briefly talks about splitting up just to aggravate me, but in the end Wandering Dawn finds traces suggesting the people who've recently been through have clearly shown more interest in the downstairs. He indicates as such and after consulting the group he leads them down to where they find a bunch of dead bodies -- recent dead bodies, not skeletons. They're dressed similarly, not any sort of uniform but at the very least buying their gear from the same place, and they're torn up and covered with blood. There are two women and a man, and there are traces of other people having been there at some point but not now.
Lecht goes to a woman with a sword, figuring she was probably the leader, and uses Corpse-Questioning Technique to interrogate.
"How did you die?"
"The woman with the hooks."
"Ah. Woman with hooks. Alright, um... What were you looking for down here?"
"We were looking for the power source of the craft. The Tear of Autochthon."
None of them have heard of this, but Lecht at least knows what the Eye of Autochthon is and presumes that the 'Tear of Autochthon' is something tied to it, possibly tied to the empire of Bagrash Köl (which they know is a thing that happened, but that's about it).
"Who's your employer?" Lecht asks.
"A Guildsman known as Basalt."
"I don't suppose they told you what they want with it?"
"Not my place to know. Either somebody higher up wants it, he's going to sell it, or he's going to sell it to someone higher up."
Lecht turns to the others to see if they want to ask anything. Stray Dog can't think of anything, but Wandering Dawn asks if Gillian died with them. (Lecht reminds him that Gillian's alive and at the camp, and I'm not sure if he forgot that fact or if he thinks she was killed and then controlled by the susurrus.)
"Gillian was part of the team that went upstairs," the dead woman explains. "I think I heard them trying to flee while we were dealing with this. If she died, I didn't see her die here."
The group makes a note to check upstairs to make sure everything's clear. They climb up a couple flights of stairs and out a hatch up onto the deck of, again, a ship. The deck is open to a much larger chamber. The group can hear the faint rumbling of rocks in the distance, and maybe a metallic scraping noise.
"That's probably Hook Lady," Lecht remarks.
Stray Dog looks around and pulls out his favorite trick. "If there's anything up here, I hope it doesn't try to get me. I'm so helpless and vulnerable to attack."
His voice doesn't echo quite right in the chamber, but the group hears movement in the darkness. It goes quiet at some point, and then he yells "Would whatever you are come out and kill me already?!"
Then there's a loud, clanking sound along the side of the craft as a massive hulk of metal the size of a T-rex pulls itself up the wall and onto the deck. In the moment it looks like a mechanical skeletal buzzard -- something once bird-shaped, some sort of automaton. It lumbers uneasily on 'all fours,' both its legs and the frameworks of wings that have long ago lost their blade-like feathers. A sickly blue glow lights it up from inside as it awkwardly charges towards them with loping, galloping movements.
"That is not the Hook Lady!" Lecht yells.
"No, no it is not," Wandering Dawn agrees as he readies himself to fight the monstrosity.
And we leave it there.
[0]-- Normally, susurrus can't materialize, which means there's not a whole lot they can do to the living unless they possess one. Zac was more than ready to use a Charm to force the being into a state where the group could hit it, but I was already planning to have it materialized as part of the exorcism for convenience's sake.
[1]-- It's not that I forgot it or anything, it's just that when I came up with a seemingly-good spot to insert it, for some reason it just didn't occur to me how far that would be into the story.
[2]-- Admittedly, I can't recall exactly what she said, and this is on me -- my notes say that the ghosts indicated 'their deaths,' but I don't recall if they were referring to their own deaths or if they were warning the Circle that they might die if they go down there.
[3]-- Perhaps if they'd done more digging around inside they might've found something that indicated more detail about the ship's origin, and I didn't go out of my way to force setting lore on them. But to at least make context available somewhere, this craft was an airship from the empire of Bagrash Köl, a sorcerer who used an artifact called the Eye of Autochthon to build an empire that ruled much of the North from floating cities and fortresses. However, the only consistent thing about the Eye of Autochthon's functionality is that it eventually turns on you, and his empire fell out of the sky one day. That's what happened to Echo Gorge -- an airship fell out of the sky and landed smack dab in the middle of the isolated mining town. It hit hard enough, with enough instant death both inside and out, that it punched a hole in the ground straight through to the Underworld -- but was immediately buried by the resulting avalanches, so no trace of it remains above ground. (For the record, Bagrash Köl, the Eye of Autochthon, and his empire are all canon stuff. Echo Gorge and its fate are entirely my creation.)
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