Session 85 – The Actually On Time Edition
2:40AM, 2nd of Faurilden
The party is stood around the now motionless worm-automaton, in a huge cavern filled with countless gears. Edan and Boris are waiting at the northern exit to the cavern, and reporting back that they can see the rear of one of the huge collosi holding up the bridges of the Upper City.
For the first time in a while, we can feel wind, and even for us dwarves, its nice to be close to the outside after fighting in the tunnels for so long. Belroar is pretty beat up, so we look to Derich to patch him up
Six automonkeys appear in the eastern corridor to the east, almost imediately after we posted guard, so I run over to meet them whilst Thorfus tries the circlet again. This time, he manages to not pass out, and at his command, five of the stop. A second command stops the now group of eight, As a test, Chuq suggests to have them hop. A ninth is still three, and Edan report a further two appear from a door in the collosus.
Three of them to the east start moving again, and yet another halt stops them once more. I feeling quite antsy to start smashing, but Chuq suggests we can distract their partial autonomy by commanding the group to sort the gears in the cavern.
(Thorfus feels some happiness in this moment, and also learns that he can only command eight at a time. He also feels some presence within the worm.)
(Chuq’s own empathy picks up a desire to been in this room, along with curiosity and some sadness.)
We begin looking at the worm, wondering about the presence within it, especially as a lot of the worm could still be buried deep within the piiles of gears. Thorfus attempts to command the worm, wondering about the presence within it, small commands that won’t disturb the room too much, without success.
One of the automonkeys starts moving again, and steps around me as I try to block it. I call a warning, and Thorfus tries the sort command. The monkey pauses, looking at the worm, but heading towards the gears. After a moment, he commands the rest of them to the east to help, and they all pause for a moment to look at the worm.
Thorfus tries to question the monkey, but it just looks at him. When I wonder out loud if it wants to fix or dismantle the worm, the monkey seems to repsond to the word ‘fix’. Thorfus commands it to repair the worm, and it instantky scurries over and starts working, After a while of working on the external parts of the worm, it begins scavenging for parts around the room.
Chuq scans the east for further company, but notices nothing, so we merely watch the automonkeys.
Myself Chuq and Edan decide to scout out the collosi, and I decide to lead the way. The interior is full of machinery, including a lot of spare parts, and even the floor itself was metal, and I could see far below and above myself. Everything is pristine within, some of it apparently quite new, at least within a few months for some of it by my reckoning.
Stepping forwards reveals railings to either side, open to cavernous spaces either side, and the only means of exiting to others parts of the collosus seems to be automonkey-sized tunnels. Looking over the edge of one side just shows more machinery, pistons and motors. I can tell this isn’t the entire breadth of the collosus, and wonder if there are rooms we aren’t seeing, and ask Edan to look around. The half-elf is pretty certain that there aren’t any hidden compartments.
Chuq begins to consider climbing, so I help him out by letting him read my mind whilst I look around to the edges of my vision, but it seems as if the machinery closes in around 30 feet away both up and down, with only maybe spaces enough for automonkeys to pass through.
Chuq begins climbing up the northern wall, heading upwards, and scales the first 30 feet fairly easily, securing the rope there. He reports potential energy in the machinery, much like what we felt in the bioforge. Above, the top is a tangle of cables and pipes, and though there is space he could possibly crawl through, it doesn’t seem to be an intended access point.
Unfortunately, he falls at this point, though he manages to slow himself and stop just short of the platform the rest of us are standing on. He climbs back up, and squeezes through into another 30 by 30 chamber, centered by a 15 foot hexagonal platform. Two windows are in the northern wall, so it’s easy to presume this room is within the head. The holes reveal the canyon beyond. A large crystal is mounted on a pedestal in the centre, with plenty of tubes running off of it. The crystalt itself is almost as big as Chuq himself, and actually appears to have been broken off of something else. As he looks at it, bursts of light appears within it.
Seeing it’s relatively safe, he invites us too join him. I decline as I don’t fancy the climb, but Edan takes the rope up to join him. This room seems to be as functionless and unmarked as below. Chuq tries his helm, and picks up a presence within the crystal, multiple in fact. speaking in many languages. The voices seem to be timed with the flashes,
Recognising some Ancient Dwarven phrases, Chuq shouts down to me to see if we can discern anything from them, but all I can make out is mentions of pain and injury of all things.
Chuq keeps Edan from touching the crystal, and instead tries the silver key he possesses. A light grows in response, but to Edans point of view, he freezes, only to snap out of it when Edan taps his shoulder. The glow fades away, though Chuq apparently didn’t see it. Oddly, Chuq can smell flowers and fresh grass, which nobody else does.
Back in the worm room, Thorfus notes that the monkey repairing the worm is incredibly happy. He tries asking one the monkey’s a location to recharge batteries, but it just stares blankly back at him.
In the mean time, I decide to climb up and help out. The copper key garners no reaction but a glowing grows again, and Chuq picks up a burst of thought, hearing more voices. Questions of ‘who are you’ and what sounds like Brice’s voice. More complaints of pain and injury, this time centered on the ‘left side’. Passing the key again only repeats the message of pain and damage once more.
Edan decides to check out the left side of the statue, and I lower him down to see, but nothing of obvious note jumps out at him. He returns to the lower platform, and ties his own rope off to lower himelf down to check out the lower left interior.
Misfortune befalls him however, and he falls, snapping the rope in the process. In desperation, he casts web below himself, narrowly managing to catch himself within what we believed to be in the left leg, seventy feet down, and close to what would’ve been certain death. Down here at least, he sees the first signs of wear and tear, the machinery not as clean and repaired as the rest of the collossus.
We look down at the sounds of the scream, and Boris reports what happened to his master to Chuq, so we climb down so we can help him back up, where he reports his findings to us. Once he has gotten over his near-death experience, we lower him down the right side to ascertain if this side was in a similar state of disrepair, but it appears to have been worked on, lending credence to the idea that the ‘injury’ is that of the collosus’ rather than anything else.
Meanwhile, the worm-repairing monkey wanders over to Thorfus and looks at him pointedly. Ordering it to repair the worm is met blankly, so Thorfus assumes it is done, amd instead sends it to sort gears with its companions. He instead looks to the worm, ordering it to straighten up, which elicits a shudder from the worm. Stepping closer to inspect the worm causes the harness to begin sluggishly reaching for him, so he steps back quickly.
At a loss, we regroup with him in the cavern, trying to decide what to do. There is a big chance that the crystal is connected to Xena’Tel in some way, given Chuq’s reaction and the mention of Brice.
We also need to decide what to do with the automonleys, even if they’re currently distracted. Thorfus also considers repairing the broken automonkeys we had collected earlier. Chuq suggests setting them long-term tasks, such as searching for treasure, though the gear sorting will definitely distract them a while.
During our talk, a monkey takes my hand and tries to lead me towards the worm. When I don’t move, it reaches up behind the backplace of my armour and causes the whole suit to open up. Thorfus sends it back to work, but a little while later, another monkey tries to get Thorfus to the same.
We realise the worm’s residual intelligence may be affecting the monkeys, but even attempting to get it to stop only causes the harness to reach for Thorfus more. Instead, he reinforces the sorting command on all the monkeys but one, which he gets to follow us, and we decide to finsh exploring this level.
Whilst we pass, the two dwarves steering well clear of the worm, Edan steps closer to the worm. The appendages momentarily pause, seemingly parting to let him pass. Unknown to the half-elf. the presence within the worm starts asking him if he wants to join, though only Thorfus can hear it through the circlet. Edan continues curiously deeper into the worm, stopping where it’s body goes vertical below the ground, but only sees the internal crushing mechanisms.
We decide to head north first, as its the closest unexplored passage, and learn here that the monkeys can sing in groups by modulating hisses and rumblings between them. After that, Thorfus sends the one ahead to scout for us, but the passage is just cut across by the chasm. Instead, we head back down across the rope bridge to check the unexplored door to the west.
An open room holds an inactive forge and a gorilla machince, as well as the ends to two of the confirmed monkey tunnels we had previously blocked. Chuq hears nothing on the other side of the door, so Thorfus has the automonkey open it. The room seems to be another forge room, similarly inactive with another gorilla.
We leave it, and decide to head east now, making for the junction with the pillar. Past that, we see the ledges Edan had previously seen, still in shadow, but there is sunlight here, as it is morning. The final junction here runs north and south, with the southern route sloping down and north merely linking to the caved in tunnels previously explored.
We head south to an area where the tunnel widens, checking the doors there. There is noise behind the eastern one, an odd type of breathing, which Thorfus reveals to be a pair of monkeys working some belows. The room is merely another forge room however, so Thorfus merely commands the monkeys to follow. The western room is much the same but for an extra monkey tunnel.
Passed the rooms, it slopes back up, and we find another intersection. The south and east tunnels are collapsed, so we go west, passed another blocked south tunnel. The tunnel west ends in another forge room down some stairs, with another tunnel going north. Thorfus collects the three monkeys from this room as well. North merely returns us to the pillared intersection, and its clear we’ve explored everything we can in this area.
We take some time to decide what to do next. We think about stopping off at the surface, dropping off a sack of monkeys to Marchmain to keep him happy. Leaving a bunch sorting gears, Thorfus decides to keep a small troop of automonkeys with us to do various tasks. We consider testing whether they can do anything for our deactivated power armour and batteries back in Lupaa’s lair.
In the end, we decide to head back to Lupaa to hopefully get answers about the crystal in the collosus. We reset our trap as we pass, and follow the long tunnel back.
At Lupaa’s lair, we fill her in on our exploits. She hisses her displeasure at the mention of Brice, but tells us the purpose of the crystals was as the collossuses brains, as part of the mechanism to move the bridges, sabotaged during the rebeillion. She purports that Brice’s name would have either come from Chuq himself or a higher power. Neither seems exactly good.
She tells us what she knows of the worm, explaining that typically the controllers would be a goblin rather than a dwarf, as building was thier role in Ancient Dwarven society.
After that, we leave the ancients with Lupaa again, and make to head back to the surface. Before we leave, Thorfus sends off a monkey with a dead battery to charge it, instructed the rest to fix the three suits of power armour and also the fountain. Edan makes sure to stow his boots and cloak as well.
