GM: Stras Acimovic
Players: April Walsh, Jeremiah Frye, Sean Nittner
System: Spell and Blade by Stras Acimovic
The Cold Room
Inside the Tower of Titans our oathbound heroes looked down on the misty filed room below. There was, besides the freezing cold mist, a circle of ruins in the center of the floor besides a dais with sparkling lights, extruded shelve with black cubes on them (also featuring sparkling lights), and metal ropes (Dream Vines) running between the shelves and to the cubes.
Loddi looked through the pane of solstice glass and just barely make out the the floor had panels in it, one of them appeared to be loose. With some reluctance he made contact with the black orb and it once again enveloped him.
As Loddi descended the ladder, the suit did keep him protected from the cold, but he had a memory of a time when he separated from his family during a hunt. A terrible storm trapped him with Nyx and then had to burrow under the surface to survive the cold. In the corner of his vision he saw what looked like the same storm, but Loddi brushed it off as a trick of the mist.
We had tied a rope around him, in the event that he needed to be pulled out, but once it was inside the mist, rope began to freeze. The mist had more “body” than normal air, but provided little resistance. Beneath the mist Loddi found an open panel, and beneath it a purple liquid that the mist was wafting up from. He closed the panel but the mist already in the room did not abate.
Loddi brought up a metal bucket of the mist (thanks digging tools) and a cube he pulled from the shelf. His “face” inside the black oily suit had a particular expression (like a Rorschach test) that we speculated might be reflecting his thoughts. Meaningless to Skanya and Rulgara, but perhaps communication to the ancient.
Once the cube was removed the lights that were sparkling on it went out, and it seemed to have an glass interface, but otherwise we couldn’t learn much from it.
The mist however, had many curious interactions. When a lit torch was dipped into the bucket the flames pushed the mist away. Was it the heat or the light? We didn’t know. We put the torch under the bucket and heated it up, but there was no reaction. So, probably the light? Loddi used his glow sphere, but it had no effect. So perhaps not all light? We tried the rings that projected orange light images of the titans and those did disperse the mist. Torch light, ring light, but not glowlight. Curious.
We headed down with torch in hand, but Loddi made that unnecessary. He flapped his great wings, which caused great confusion for the black orb symbiose (who didn’t realize till that point that his body could make that shape.
Momentarily protected from the freezing mist, Skanya studied the dais and noticed that moving her hand over certain lights caused tone sounds, but they had no musicality or pattern she could produce. The lights hovered in the air, creating a three-dimensional patterns of different colors. While the patterns were not familiar, they were close to familiar. Skanya thought of constellations and realized that perhaps from another angle (very, very high in the sky) and at another time (very, very long ago) some of these patterns might just be constellations, or parts of constellations, or multiple overlapping constellations indeed. Rulgara helped her by recording the patterns with Skanya’s “pen” until we built up a small battery of constellation “circuits” and one of them activated the dais!
The circle in the floor beneath them began to lower deeper into the tower! As the descended Scanya started brainstorming. “Rulgara, help me with this. Skanya, Door Opener. Just doesn’t sound right.” We mulled for a moment and settled on “Skanya, Star Singer.” She liked that very much.
Loddi removed the symbiote and stored it in the glass vial Skanya has collected from the treasures above.
A Blazing Sun
The floor lowered us into a the anteroom before a massive chamber that held a blinding sun! Metal rods were plunged into it and occasionally as they moved, golden drops of metal fell from it and were absorbed into the floor below. Incredible!
On the opposite side of the large chamber there was a doorway marked with a black diamond, which we learned from before, indicated it would open once we approached. We would just have to pass through the room with giant sun!
We entered the massive chamber, which was warn, but not scorching. Skanya stared at the sun in wonder and leaned into to whisper to her sister “Rulgara, is…. this a star?” It felt sacrilegious even to ask the question. Rulgara wasn’t sure, maybe this was a faux star, but shortly after Skanya’s nose started to bleed and it would not stop!
They all fled back to the lift to try and figure out what was happening. Skanya plugged her nose with a bit of cloth and wiped away the blood. With some trepidation she held aloft the Eye of Akta to look through it. Through the Eye, she could see the metal rods momentarily turned to mist as they moved and the liquid gold dripped from the sun.
Rulgara also tried to sense what was happening. She held out her star metal sword and felt it vibrate with great intensity as the rods turned to mist. She sense that in that moment, the danger was not present.
Maybe we could time it and run?
Loddi put on his symbiote suit again, hoping it would offer him protection, and the charged forward with Skanya and Rulgara behind him. But as soon as we got into the room the symbiotic skin screamed in agony and tore itself away from his body. Loddi froze in pain just as the rods were rematerializing as we knew were in great danger. Skanya looked to her sister, hoping Gar would understand her look of desperation, and bolted for the door. Gar, just as Skanya believed she would, picked up Loddi and carried him the rest of the way. Loddi, wracked with pain, held onto the mass of the symbiote to shield it as well. We made it across the room and to safety, but our bodies suffered from the exposure. Skanya and Loddi were bleeding from their nose and eyes. Rulgara merely felt her body breaking it apart from the inside.
Catching our breath
When the made it panting with exertion and stopped to check in with each other. Skanya was scared “Rulgara, if that was a star, do you think that machine of the ancient was hurting it?”
Gar shook here heads “that was certainly a song we were never supposed to hear.” Skanya could not hear any thing, none but a star metal smith could, but she trusted her sister. The younger sister placed her small hand on the pommel of Rulgara’s star metal sword and felt its soft vibration. Gar in turn put her hand and Skanya’s and assured her that their bonds were strong.
The companions were safe and secure for a moment, so they took a moment to rest. Skanya gave her last two sandwiches to Gar and Loddi, who shared his jerky with her. The talked about what the moon and the stars meant to each of them, and then Skanya prayed to Maya and Akta for a blessing of protection as they delved deeper.
Mechanical Weavers
As they descended the green stone walls turned translucent. Outside we could see the lake was not frozen this far beneath the surface and sea creatures moved around in it. Inside we could see the gold liquid (gold blood?) drip down and be formed into gold cubes which were in turn formed into different shapes and colors as it continued passing down.
At the base of the stairs was a circular outer hallway that looked in on a central room where the gold cubes percolated into and then were formed into other shapes by mechanical spiders that placed them into molds made of orange light before it descended further. The spiders all seemed to come from a giant glowing ball above.
While Rulgara was initially eager to enter the room and make friends with these metal minions, Skanya found another lift on the other side and they opted to take it down rather that potentially set off alarm systems within.
DANGER ROOM!
Below the lift entered a control room that looked over a giant assembly yard beneath. This is where the final form of the gold components were going, directed by a mechanical overseer to assemble more machines. Some of them small, one of them the size of a mastodon! We did not know how close they were to being completed, but we didn’t want to find out.
The control room featured:
- Strange visuals that causes us to both see the room itself and a floating nebula superimposed on it.
- Many panels with constellation controls that were acting on their own accord.
- A clear floor to see the room below where the mechanical creatures were being assembled.
- A large ring with orbs floating around it depicting different images.
- A table with more baubles of the ancients.
Below was:
- An overseer machine assembling the other machines of death, each of them in their own assembly cradles.
- At the far end of the room a sarcophagus and a golden glowing cube (the same that Rulgara sensed earlier) floating above it. That’s what we came for!
Kormel warned us that there was dangerous dream energy coming from the sarcophagus, but that’s what we brought the wise one’s charms for. We made a plan and set it into action.
Rulgara and Loddi waited on the assembly floor, ready to leap into action when needed, while Kormel and Skanya snuck down the hall to the cube. At one point they were almost detected, but Skanya pulled Kormel down into the assembly cradle and out of the view of the overseer. There they saw a mass of blades being inserted into the larges of the machines. Skanya wished she had Gar’s sword to pry into the machine, but that wasn’t the mission. She also felt a wave of weakness, a terrible feeling that there was no point in carrying on…but the Wise One’s charm protected her and they carried on.
Skanya and Kormel made their way to the end of the room but just as she placed her four fingered gloved hand on the surface of the sarcophagus, another four finger hand was pressed on it from the inside, and something terrible screamed into our dreams from within. The overseer was alerted, and prepared for battle!
Skanya’s mind would have been shattered by touching the cube, but Kormel beat her to it, and was handling it with his Seven Circuit Claw, which allowed him to hold it without harm!
Thoughts for next game
Reminders for me:
I want to communicated with the ancient (or whatever is in the sarcophagus) by drawing constellations on the glass. Not sure if it will work, but if not, I think Loddi’s “face” may communicate glyphs that it could understand. “FREE THE STAR!”
I failed the last Sneak test and lots of bad things happened, but I’ve got a push left on Stealthy so if possible, I want to resist one of the consequences of being detection.
A fun screenshot April took!
