bluegargantua (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluegargantua) wrote2008-11-12 10:40 am
bluegargantua) wrote2008-11-12 10:40 am
Adjo's Journals (13 of N)
Hi,
Well, if nothing else, it appears I have a promising career amongst the Kraken Pirate Cult – so long as my impressive handlebar mustache disguise remains intact.
After talking to Terrance in the guard barracks, we decided to check things out in the worker barracks. The workers are all brand-new members of the Kraken cult and are being forced to work long tedious hours for little or no appreciable gain. Considering my own, shameful misuse at the hands of the Commonwealth Army, I feel some distant kinship with these poor fellows.
On the way over, a couple of higher-ranking types came over and grabbed Taras to fill out the perimeter patrol they were sending out. There was little we could do and we said we’d meet him back at the barracks. Off he went and into the worker quarters we went.
Shay engaged the only half-awake man in the mess hall to a game of cards (cleaning him out in the process incidentally). From him, we learned that the pirates are digging up some underground facility, or rather, they’re digging down to a series of entrances to an underground facility. According to the worker, they’d made significant progress and uncovered some stone slabs. The Captain halted further dig operations.
We also find out that there’s another scout from Team Omega who was captured and is being held in another building for “recreational purposes”. Terrance mentioned her in passing and said we could get our turn if we went and told them that he had sent us. This set off some discussion about what to do, but the overriding opinion was that as bad as things were for the scout right now, busting her out immediately wouldn’t do anyone any good and we’d never find out more about what was going on.
So we go to the big tent to turn in our “scouting report”. The tent is massive. There’s an administrative building and a couple of storage sheds along with a half dozen large excavation sites. From where we stand we can see that the dig goes down through dirt and then hits worked stone and stairs. There are also guards milling about and the chances of us sneaking into the dungeon are slim.
A huge man whose features were difficult to make out under the weight of his tattoos asks us our business and true to form we say we’ve come in from patrol and want to give a report. So the big man takes us over to where a small scrawny guy takes notes. Shay gives a good story, but it’s clear that they don’t fully trust us and they ask some leading “gotcha” questions. We get through with a bit of bluffing but mostly by playing dumb grunt soldiers who only do what they’re told (luckily I have more than enough acting talent and plenty of role-models surrounding me so I was able to fake it).
We discuss how we were sent out to kill the bulette and how we succeeded and they seemed impressed by that. We might get a medal from the Captain! Which, I might add, is a hell of a lot more recognition than the Commonwealth has given us so far. I suppose the magical gear is a fair substitute, but we only saved the City of Icewatch. Whatever.
Anyway, we’re just on the right side of “these guys are fakers” and we have no reason to stick around so we leave the tent. Now we head to the building where the scout is being held. Inside was a squad of rough-looking men who tried to run us off until we mentioned that Terrance had sent us. Shay, being Shay, quickly set up a game of cards.
The squad was commanded by a thug named Roger who was currently having his way with the poor captive in the other room. Clearly not a comfortable position for us despite our concerns over what we’d do once we freed the scout. When Roger came out and two other members of his squad went in, that was pretty much the final straw for Thrace who stepped up behind Roger and swung at him. Shay changed out his deck of cards for a deck of shuriken and all the pirates at the table were suddenly blinded.
I set a bunch of them on fire.
The fight was fairly short. Thrace eventually lopped Roger’s head off while Ander and Hendel rushed into the side room to free the scout and kill her attackers. We quickly stuffed the bodies into the side room and cleaned up as best we could when Terrance and a few of his crew walked in. Terrance sent his guys out and sat down with us for a friendly game of cards. A rather tense game as we were hoping the stench of death didn’t penetrate into the common room and force us to kill even more people.
We found out two very interested things in that card game:
Terrance promised to cover up our rescue operation and we go back to the guard barracks to rest up for the morning. Taras returned from his patrol none the worse for wear. Oh and Roger had a magical cutlass which I converted to a magical shuriken for Shay.
Next morning we’re up and into the tent. We get our marching orders. We go down into Entrance 5. We’ve got 12 hours to explore as much as we can and then get out. After 12 hours the next team goes in. There are teams going in on every entrance so we might run into them, might not. The basic gist is to get back in 12 hours.
Upon further examination of the dig site, my hopes that the treasure is a flying boat are somewhat diminished. Perhaps there’s a secret passage that leads out into an underground hangar or something.
So down we go. The door is locked and trapped. Kestrel disarms the trap. We know she’s done this successfully because the fountain of blood coming from one of the other entrances suggests that failing to disarm the trap is somewhat catastrophic.
With a bit of fiddling the front door is opened and we go in. The entry way has several exits. Some of the exits have wooden doors that have been hacked to bits and on the far side is a set of stone double doors that have been seriously gouged but not broken. On the theory that the more resistant and intact a door is, the more likely it will lead us someplace good, we try the stone door.
Shay is pretty much eviscerated by the trap he knows is there. Twice. Each time Kestrel can make out the sound of breaking glass on the far side of the thick stone door. Suddenly, the doors snaps open and we’re looking down a hallway covered in broken glass.
Thrace cautiously moves into the hallway and sweeps out a path. As we come in we realize the glass seems to be from a set of large mirrors that once lined this hallways but which were knocked off the wall by these little mechanical pistons (activated when Shay set off the trap). It’s not clear if this was simply some overly elaborate alarm system (the crash must’ve been very loud) or if the mirrors were magical in some way and released a monster (although there was no arcane residue anywhere I could see).
The hallway ended with a wide set of steps going down. Shay started down when the steps folded flat into a slide and he went tumbling down to hit the bottom rather hard. He got up to look around for a mechanism to reverse the trap when a couple of daggers slammed into him.
We were strung out along the hallway and thus the general charge forward began. I had just reached the top of the stairs/slope, when a large stone wall slammed down nearly crushing Thrace and cutting about half the party off from the group fighting on the far side. Reth and Hendel charged back out of the hallway to try and find another way down. I held my position hoping the party could reverse the door.
This they did and I carefully descended the slope to the bottom where I discovered the party engaged in a fierce fight against shadowy, goblin-like assassins.
I set a bunch of them on fire.
The monsters have an interesting defense in that when you kill one, they explode in a burst of darkness that blinds you for a short time. At this point, the majority of the team is blind, but there are maybe three or four of these nuisances left. Two of whom are still on fire. I am cautiously optimistic about our ability to finish them off.
[NOTES: We ended in the middle of the fight. These Dark Ones are kind of a fun fight. They're super-Rogue-y and that "go blind when I die" is a neat effect too. Granted, Adjo finds it more interesting because it only affects people in Close Burst 1 and Adjo has no interest in being that close to them, but still...]
later
Tom
Well, if nothing else, it appears I have a promising career amongst the Kraken Pirate Cult – so long as my impressive handlebar mustache disguise remains intact.
After talking to Terrance in the guard barracks, we decided to check things out in the worker barracks. The workers are all brand-new members of the Kraken cult and are being forced to work long tedious hours for little or no appreciable gain. Considering my own, shameful misuse at the hands of the Commonwealth Army, I feel some distant kinship with these poor fellows.
On the way over, a couple of higher-ranking types came over and grabbed Taras to fill out the perimeter patrol they were sending out. There was little we could do and we said we’d meet him back at the barracks. Off he went and into the worker quarters we went.
Shay engaged the only half-awake man in the mess hall to a game of cards (cleaning him out in the process incidentally). From him, we learned that the pirates are digging up some underground facility, or rather, they’re digging down to a series of entrances to an underground facility. According to the worker, they’d made significant progress and uncovered some stone slabs. The Captain halted further dig operations.
We also find out that there’s another scout from Team Omega who was captured and is being held in another building for “recreational purposes”. Terrance mentioned her in passing and said we could get our turn if we went and told them that he had sent us. This set off some discussion about what to do, but the overriding opinion was that as bad as things were for the scout right now, busting her out immediately wouldn’t do anyone any good and we’d never find out more about what was going on.
So we go to the big tent to turn in our “scouting report”. The tent is massive. There’s an administrative building and a couple of storage sheds along with a half dozen large excavation sites. From where we stand we can see that the dig goes down through dirt and then hits worked stone and stairs. There are also guards milling about and the chances of us sneaking into the dungeon are slim.
A huge man whose features were difficult to make out under the weight of his tattoos asks us our business and true to form we say we’ve come in from patrol and want to give a report. So the big man takes us over to where a small scrawny guy takes notes. Shay gives a good story, but it’s clear that they don’t fully trust us and they ask some leading “gotcha” questions. We get through with a bit of bluffing but mostly by playing dumb grunt soldiers who only do what they’re told (luckily I have more than enough acting talent and plenty of role-models surrounding me so I was able to fake it).
We discuss how we were sent out to kill the bulette and how we succeeded and they seemed impressed by that. We might get a medal from the Captain! Which, I might add, is a hell of a lot more recognition than the Commonwealth has given us so far. I suppose the magical gear is a fair substitute, but we only saved the City of Icewatch. Whatever.
Anyway, we’re just on the right side of “these guys are fakers” and we have no reason to stick around so we leave the tent. Now we head to the building where the scout is being held. Inside was a squad of rough-looking men who tried to run us off until we mentioned that Terrance had sent us. Shay, being Shay, quickly set up a game of cards.
The squad was commanded by a thug named Roger who was currently having his way with the poor captive in the other room. Clearly not a comfortable position for us despite our concerns over what we’d do once we freed the scout. When Roger came out and two other members of his squad went in, that was pretty much the final straw for Thrace who stepped up behind Roger and swung at him. Shay changed out his deck of cards for a deck of shuriken and all the pirates at the table were suddenly blinded.
I set a bunch of them on fire.
The fight was fairly short. Thrace eventually lopped Roger’s head off while Ander and Hendel rushed into the side room to free the scout and kill her attackers. We quickly stuffed the bodies into the side room and cleaned up as best we could when Terrance and a few of his crew walked in. Terrance sent his guys out and sat down with us for a friendly game of cards. A rather tense game as we were hoping the stench of death didn’t penetrate into the common room and force us to kill even more people.
We found out two very interested things in that card game:
- Terrance is actually a spy. He’s Dunhouse’s younger brother.
- Now that the dungeon has been unearthed, the pirates are sending teams in to explore the place and find whatever it is that’s buried there. Terrance is fleeing the camp with the scout (Annalise) in tow, but he’s put our names in as a good “assault team”. We’ll be going down Entrance 5 in the morning to find out what we can.
Terrance promised to cover up our rescue operation and we go back to the guard barracks to rest up for the morning. Taras returned from his patrol none the worse for wear. Oh and Roger had a magical cutlass which I converted to a magical shuriken for Shay.
Next morning we’re up and into the tent. We get our marching orders. We go down into Entrance 5. We’ve got 12 hours to explore as much as we can and then get out. After 12 hours the next team goes in. There are teams going in on every entrance so we might run into them, might not. The basic gist is to get back in 12 hours.
Upon further examination of the dig site, my hopes that the treasure is a flying boat are somewhat diminished. Perhaps there’s a secret passage that leads out into an underground hangar or something.
So down we go. The door is locked and trapped. Kestrel disarms the trap. We know she’s done this successfully because the fountain of blood coming from one of the other entrances suggests that failing to disarm the trap is somewhat catastrophic.
With a bit of fiddling the front door is opened and we go in. The entry way has several exits. Some of the exits have wooden doors that have been hacked to bits and on the far side is a set of stone double doors that have been seriously gouged but not broken. On the theory that the more resistant and intact a door is, the more likely it will lead us someplace good, we try the stone door.
Shay is pretty much eviscerated by the trap he knows is there. Twice. Each time Kestrel can make out the sound of breaking glass on the far side of the thick stone door. Suddenly, the doors snaps open and we’re looking down a hallway covered in broken glass.
Thrace cautiously moves into the hallway and sweeps out a path. As we come in we realize the glass seems to be from a set of large mirrors that once lined this hallways but which were knocked off the wall by these little mechanical pistons (activated when Shay set off the trap). It’s not clear if this was simply some overly elaborate alarm system (the crash must’ve been very loud) or if the mirrors were magical in some way and released a monster (although there was no arcane residue anywhere I could see).
The hallway ended with a wide set of steps going down. Shay started down when the steps folded flat into a slide and he went tumbling down to hit the bottom rather hard. He got up to look around for a mechanism to reverse the trap when a couple of daggers slammed into him.
We were strung out along the hallway and thus the general charge forward began. I had just reached the top of the stairs/slope, when a large stone wall slammed down nearly crushing Thrace and cutting about half the party off from the group fighting on the far side. Reth and Hendel charged back out of the hallway to try and find another way down. I held my position hoping the party could reverse the door.
This they did and I carefully descended the slope to the bottom where I discovered the party engaged in a fierce fight against shadowy, goblin-like assassins.
I set a bunch of them on fire.
The monsters have an interesting defense in that when you kill one, they explode in a burst of darkness that blinds you for a short time. At this point, the majority of the team is blind, but there are maybe three or four of these nuisances left. Two of whom are still on fire. I am cautiously optimistic about our ability to finish them off.
[NOTES: We ended in the middle of the fight. These Dark Ones are kind of a fun fight. They're super-Rogue-y and that "go blind when I die" is a neat effect too. Granted, Adjo finds it more interesting because it only affects people in Close Burst 1 and Adjo has no interest in being that close to them, but still...]
later
Tom