Adjo's Journal (29 of N)
Mar. 25th, 2009 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
One thing about government contracts, they certainly do absorb a lot of one’s R&D time. In the past couple of days, I’ve made tentative progress on translating the magical tomes we collected from the sky port and the Orcite fane. Those crystalline panels appear to be some sort of translation mechanism. The writing is incredibly ancient and even with the help of Dauntless, I’m only making very slow progress. I’ll have to devote a great deal of the next few months to getting this thing decoded. That progress will be slowed considerably if we keep getting distracted by little side treks.
In this case, Dauntless detected smoke rising from a subholt, a sort of mini-fortress. Since Lady Bastion was accompanying us, we were somewhat obligated to put down and investigate. Dauntless landed about half a mile away and we all piled into Brawl and drove up to the front gates, which had been partially smashed in. Brawl finished the job and we were inside.
There was a wide courtyard area in the middle of the holt and within the courtyard there were several pylons with charred corpses chained to them. We were able to determine that a number of the bodies were dragonborn. I noted that the fire, while not magical, was definitely of an alchemical nature.
Brawl drove around to the left of the pylons and would up in front of a final, larger pylon which appeared to hold a small family of dragonborn. This was quite enough for Taras and a number of the others so they hopped out to take a look. I remained within Brawl which was, as ever, the intelligent decision.
Snipers on a guard tower sent shots down onto Taras and a number of men came pouring out from the side buildings. A great number of those men were quickly cut down by the poison cloud I generated to cover Brawl’s rear arc and protect Lady Bastion and Kaylee as well.
It was at this point the doors to the main keep opened and a rather wild-eyed woman with a flamethrower/rifle combo and a shield with a red bell on it appeared and hosed down Hendel and Thrace, while ranting and raving about killing abominations and mockeries. Look, lady, just because humans are the most versatile and elegant species on the planet, you show that by not bringing it up all the time and being a jackass. I will say, however, that the flamethrower rig was great. The fuel was more of that alchemical flame which had the intriguing property of only burning non-human creatures. So if her tank ruptured, she’d be bathed in flames that wouldn’t hurt her. Brilliant!
Meanwhile, I was sending my poison cloud about the battlefield mowing down cultists (I assumed they’re cultists of some sort although the red bell motif wasn’t familiar to me). A couple of them managed to rush up and stuff grenades into Brawl. Despite the fresh coat of Adjo’s Lifeblood Red coating the interior, I maintain that Brawl provide superior mage protection.
I had just draped the poison cloud over the crazy lady (who was moving closer to try and finish off Taras and Shay) when some idiot dispelled my effect. I turned my attention to blasting the snipers off the tower, but they were nimble and dodged behind cover. A few shots from Brawl’s cannon put paid to them nicely however.
By this point, the tide of battle had turned and even though the crazy lady had reduced Taras to charcoal, she decided to flee the scene. I had Brawl shift into reverse and we backed up so that I had a clear line of sight on the crazy lady. I slapped down a chilling zone of frost that froze her in place allowing Kestrel to shatter her with a well-placed shot.
Dauntless arrived at this point and managed to pick off a few stragglers that had fled in another direction. We also met Ergan and Aura, a Dwarf and Half-elf who’d survived the genocide and had given us some help in our fight. Kestrel was most keen to get Ergan (an artificer) hired as crew. Lady Bastion got the survivors packed up and we flew on to Bastion itself where the Lord Bastion was kind enough to get poor Taras raised from the dead.
Hopefully I’ll have time to get some more research done on this book before our celebratory dinner. And then, finally, two weeks on a tropical island.
NOTES: Tough fight for Taras, who generated over 500 hp via healing surges before getting killed. Stinking Cloud is a wonderful spell and now that it's not undead all day, every day, I can actually use it to full efficiency.
Also, Adjo got some magical boots that "are powered by fire". They let him teleport and it deals damage to people standing next to him when he leaves. I like to think they look like the boots on the left.
later
Tom
One thing about government contracts, they certainly do absorb a lot of one’s R&D time. In the past couple of days, I’ve made tentative progress on translating the magical tomes we collected from the sky port and the Orcite fane. Those crystalline panels appear to be some sort of translation mechanism. The writing is incredibly ancient and even with the help of Dauntless, I’m only making very slow progress. I’ll have to devote a great deal of the next few months to getting this thing decoded. That progress will be slowed considerably if we keep getting distracted by little side treks.
In this case, Dauntless detected smoke rising from a subholt, a sort of mini-fortress. Since Lady Bastion was accompanying us, we were somewhat obligated to put down and investigate. Dauntless landed about half a mile away and we all piled into Brawl and drove up to the front gates, which had been partially smashed in. Brawl finished the job and we were inside.
There was a wide courtyard area in the middle of the holt and within the courtyard there were several pylons with charred corpses chained to them. We were able to determine that a number of the bodies were dragonborn. I noted that the fire, while not magical, was definitely of an alchemical nature.
Brawl drove around to the left of the pylons and would up in front of a final, larger pylon which appeared to hold a small family of dragonborn. This was quite enough for Taras and a number of the others so they hopped out to take a look. I remained within Brawl which was, as ever, the intelligent decision.
Snipers on a guard tower sent shots down onto Taras and a number of men came pouring out from the side buildings. A great number of those men were quickly cut down by the poison cloud I generated to cover Brawl’s rear arc and protect Lady Bastion and Kaylee as well.
It was at this point the doors to the main keep opened and a rather wild-eyed woman with a flamethrower/rifle combo and a shield with a red bell on it appeared and hosed down Hendel and Thrace, while ranting and raving about killing abominations and mockeries. Look, lady, just because humans are the most versatile and elegant species on the planet, you show that by not bringing it up all the time and being a jackass. I will say, however, that the flamethrower rig was great. The fuel was more of that alchemical flame which had the intriguing property of only burning non-human creatures. So if her tank ruptured, she’d be bathed in flames that wouldn’t hurt her. Brilliant!
Meanwhile, I was sending my poison cloud about the battlefield mowing down cultists (I assumed they’re cultists of some sort although the red bell motif wasn’t familiar to me). A couple of them managed to rush up and stuff grenades into Brawl. Despite the fresh coat of Adjo’s Lifeblood Red coating the interior, I maintain that Brawl provide superior mage protection.
I had just draped the poison cloud over the crazy lady (who was moving closer to try and finish off Taras and Shay) when some idiot dispelled my effect. I turned my attention to blasting the snipers off the tower, but they were nimble and dodged behind cover. A few shots from Brawl’s cannon put paid to them nicely however.
By this point, the tide of battle had turned and even though the crazy lady had reduced Taras to charcoal, she decided to flee the scene. I had Brawl shift into reverse and we backed up so that I had a clear line of sight on the crazy lady. I slapped down a chilling zone of frost that froze her in place allowing Kestrel to shatter her with a well-placed shot.
Dauntless arrived at this point and managed to pick off a few stragglers that had fled in another direction. We also met Ergan and Aura, a Dwarf and Half-elf who’d survived the genocide and had given us some help in our fight. Kestrel was most keen to get Ergan (an artificer) hired as crew. Lady Bastion got the survivors packed up and we flew on to Bastion itself where the Lord Bastion was kind enough to get poor Taras raised from the dead.
Hopefully I’ll have time to get some more research done on this book before our celebratory dinner. And then, finally, two weeks on a tropical island.
NOTES: Tough fight for Taras, who generated over 500 hp via healing surges before getting killed. Stinking Cloud is a wonderful spell and now that it's not undead all day, every day, I can actually use it to full efficiency.
Also, Adjo got some magical boots that "are powered by fire". They let him teleport and it deals damage to people standing next to him when he leaves. I like to think they look like the boots on the left.
later
Tom
