Session One Hundred and Two (Graveyard of Empires Summary)
Session 102
3rd Jourilden
The party continues the fight against the mysterious flying shard after Blaise was viciously wounded to feed it’s multiplication. The two shards reverse direction and stab at Blaise again, one hitting and subsequently splitting again, making a total of three shards now flying around.
The party lashes out as best they can to try and bring all the shards down simultaneously, whilst Derich prepares a Chant to assist the group. However, several Magic Missiles from Edan shattered all the shards without issue.
With the combat dealt with, Thorfus returns to the Administrator’s desk to continue cycling through the options, beginning with the coding at the Analyst’s stations. We seem to get more strange mixings of Ancient Dwarven letters and numbers that we can’t really make much of. Testing the ‘X’ Platinum key on one of the pedestals doesn’t garner much of a reaction either.
Edan manages to bring the odd sequences to thier end, which literally just says, ‘End’, and presents a flashing block. Reaching for it, Edan prompts the line ‘Insert information reliquary to download code’ to appear.
We discuss which of our cubes to use and sacrifice, and believing we have a duplicate of the geographical survey, Edan utilises that one, causing the display to show “Anti-Virus Code*”.
Poking at the asterisk, tells us that the cube cannot be removed from Area X whilst it contains the code.
The party plays with the various stations for a while, without much success other than discovering that an anti-virus of some kind is complete. We then check the desk drawer, discovering a drive that potentially covers all of the stations.
Figuring we have all the information we can get, we decide to head towards the prison area with the hopes of finding the Dragon Consort. The northern section seems much as the other have done, and the monkey sent manages to get over and extend the bridge. Unfortunately, the bridge sticks half way.
We mess around with ropes for a while, trying to work out a way to pass over the gap safely, whilst Thorfus sends an Automonkey to open final door and confirm it to b the same as all the others. He then has it open the northern door, which opens into a room with a bridge over a pit, guarded by arrow slits.
Mental probes are unable to pick up anything in range, so Derich heads over the rope to the north side, joining the monkey. After an all-clear call, the rest of the party heads over, leaving Pons and Blaise to guard the rope.
Further Automonkey scouting across the bridge in the far north room reveals another room with four doors that holds a corpse. It is wearing robes with vines and leaves in gold as a pattern, and is holding several items in it’s hands. There is a pedestal, and a window on the north wall reveals a room with a blue tint to it. The monkey approaches the corpse, seeing that it holds a reliquary and an odd disc with words on it, made from the gate material.
Thorfus has the automonkey reach for the disc and pick it up, without garnering a reaction. The party then starts heading across the bridge, Chuq taking the lead. When we reach the monkey, we can read the disc, which reads ‘Never Forget’ in Ancient Dwarven along the edge. It also activates and starts playing a hologram.
The hologram displays a sphere, zooming in on the sphere until appears we are flying swiftly across an ocean, passing islands until we reach a large island with a large crystal tower. The view swoops up the tower, which appears as interconnected vines eventually disappearing into a large cylinder high up above it. The cylinder spins slowly, and a number of spikes jut out from it. The whole thing is surrounded by a gigantic ring, as big as the original sphere.
A pulse of red light emanates, followed by a view of the tower falling in pieces down to the surface of the sphere that cause tidal waves and shockwaves as they impact.
As we looked at the cylinder, we realise that words are emblazoned across it’s side in Ancient Dwarven, reading Xeno Telerobotics/Telergy. With that revelation, and the limitless possibilities it could reveal, Derich nevertheless moves on, looking through the window.
It opens out into a hexagonal room on a lower level. There is a pedestal and a floating platform. On the platform there is a seat holds a naked human female, strapped down, with red hair and a dragon tattoo. Floating around her head is a circlet attached to the ceiling. Banging on the glass garners no reaction, expected as there is a blue haze to the room.
Thorfus checks the pedestal, which already holds a number of options, most notably for Derich being the ‘Adjust Prisoner Synchronistion’ option, amongst door controls. Slapping his hands away, Thorfus decides to check the other cube as well.
The other cube presents a different option, seemingly just a single a memo. Activating it reveals a holographic, older female dwarf who introduces herself as the Chief Botanist.
” I, Chief Botanist Nola Davodorn, sit here looking at conclusive evidence that we have succeeded – the rebellion is finished and XenoTel restored … or it would be, if there were any way to leave this prison and deliver our cure. There has been no contact from the other administrators of Xen’Khel in days and I must assume that facility has been breached by the enemy. The fail-safes that keep us protected sealed our fate.”
ii. “My only choice is to retire the researchers here, including myself, and enable the first level defenses in case the rebels find some way into this facility. I will be storing my key in the administrative safe under the protection of a particularly nasty toy manufactured by Kalgunn. Assuming anyone capable of accessing this record is here to recover our work, please be aware that the pass phrase to deactivate the guardian is Nazron’Ethol (Last Hope).”
iii. “I will now retire to the prisoner observation chamber to spend my last moments in the presence of our vanquished enemy – gloating before that creature, who is both symbol and means of our delayed victory, will bring me some peace before I sleep. May XenoTel preserve me to see the day of his vengeance. “
In anger, Derich kicks the corpse across the room, and Edan pockets the cube for later. Thorfus also pockets the disc. Derich begs to have Prix released, and waits by the door to let be through once they synchronisation has been dropped. Chuq wants to make sure Thorfus is ready to resynch the moment it happens.
The Starchy Boyz are put off by the Cleric’s eagerness, and push to finish exploring the area to ensure everything is safe and we have full knowledge of the situation. Thorfus decides to send monkeys to scout east and west, via the doors marked green.
The east opens into a long corridor that goes along behind the arrow slits we previously saw, and houses a number of floating orbs crackling with electricity. West appears to be it’s mirror image. Both corridors have shutters over the arrow slits, and we send the monkeys to close them all.
Whilst they do so, the party quizzes Derich on his involvement with Prix and history as a rebel, to garner better knowledge on how to deal with the dragon. They also turn on Araquiel, who reveals that the Dragon Emperor wasn’t as convinced of the need to overthrow XenoTel, but also had some skill with the transpatial energy. The Devilfish also notes that he sided with the consort, despite the rest of his people being against the final destruction of XenoTel, as that would mean the loss of magic across all of Meidia.
We next try the Analyst’s doors at Edan’s behest. We get access to a small room with doors leading off without obvious means of opening them. A segmented shape all rolled up lies in the centre. The doors seemingly function in an airlock pattern as we’ve previously seen, so a monkey and Edan head through to scout it out. The southwest door opens into a large room that twists around to the north and holds a pair of pedestals. A large window looks over the prison chamber.
Chuq joins them with a key when the pedestals fail to activate, and it gives them a number of options regarding the prisoner’s dreams, such as inducing and capturing. They get a fractured series of numbers and words as we previously saw. The other pedestal shows the same options, so they remove the cubes. Heading over other to the east, it seems to be much the same, including cubes with the same functionality. Edan also collects those.
Eventually, Thorfus begins slowly reducing the desynchronisation to 0%, and though Prix begins to breath, she gives no reaction, and Chuq picks up nothing via ESP but the fact a powerful, calm conciousness exists there. Derich, Edan and a monkey enter the room, heading for the pedestal.
After retrieving the silver key, Edan tests that with the pedestal in the prison cell, but garners no reaction. Eventually, Thorfus enters the room as well with the X-Platinum Key and passes that over, which gives options to extend a bridge or release the restraints.
Derich instantly pushes to access the bridge and runs over, and once Thorfus releases the restraints, picks her up and carries her across. A Detect Charm and a Heal do nothing to awaken her, so it’s theorised she’s still in a dream state, so we return her to the chair and attempt to deactivate it.
Edan manages to access some information on the dream, which was reportedly built from interrogation of the Dragon, and a holograph shows her dreaming of building a ritual spell as a dragon.
After trying several ways to find new options, the party gives up and simply carries Prix out of the room, which activates an alarm. As the automatons activate, the pedestal reveals the alarm can be shut off from within the administrator’s office.
The human-form dragon in arm, Derich tries to make a run for it, only for the bridge to begin tilting. Unable to keep his footing, he falls, dropping himself and Prix into the desynch field some 200 hundred feet below…