Iron Gods:Log
Session 1
4714 AR, Pharast Sunday the 15th
The party convened with plans to throw in their lot in the expedition under Black Hill with the intent of recovering Khonnir Baine, in hopes of recovering the lucrative 50gp and the scroll of resurrection if not needed. The 200gp reward is for relighting the torch or confirming that it cannot be relit.
They reached out to the town counsel, and the secretary told them that the only counselperson available to assist them is Dolga Freddert. Dolga explained the rewards and offered information. Poing asked if he could keep any junk, and Dolga explained that he would need to speak to the junkmaster Garritt Burnwaddle to determine what could be done there. Point explained that he was already familiar.
Dolga offered the party a writ for a 20% discount at any shop, and explained that this was the best she could offer, beyond a few other piece of minor aid (casting a spell of extended water breathing).
She explained that Khonnir had made an expedition, returning with a large deactivated robot. Dolga explained that there were at least 2 clandestine expeditions after Baine's first one, in addition to the fact that the cave was only found because of footprints leading into the water.
As they approached Khonnir Baine's they heard a scream some of the party recognized as coming from Khonnir's daughter Val Baine, and encountered a robot that appeared to be deconstructing the house. After defeating the robot (which split into several), Val came out and explained that she had reactivated it, and it had stared at her before tearing down the house.
They put some boards up to ensure that the room is closed off and put the broken robots in the foundry for subsequent examination.
Session 2
The party spoke with Val Baine, who expressed that she was grateful for the rescue. The robot, she explained, had been broken, but she was able to fix it. However, it first looked at her for an overlong moment, then immediately went to work disassembling the house. She agreed to let the party investigate her home for any clues to the whereabouts or status of Khonnir. The art in his hone were mostly landscapes: a field of flowers, an oceanscape with a frigate depicted, and finally a crooked tree on a moonlit night. Among his possessions was a Numerian idol of a metallic scorpion (made of a fairly common skymetal) with interlocking plates and a zircon tipped tail. Poing estimated its value to an appropriate buyer at 35g. Khonnir Baine's spellbook is present, which suggests that he did not intend to be in the cavern for long enough to need to prepare spells.
They perused his spellbook, finding: air bubble gust of wind feather fall floating disk unseen servant magic missile
acid arrow resist energy see invisibility web detect radiation
dispel magic fireball fly
Khonnir Baine only seems to work on a single project at a time, and the current project appears to be smelting Glaucite. The robot he has in his house is marked with the Technic League's symbol, which caused some concern in the party.
Val tells the party they can use Khonnir's tavern as a base of operations. She offers the party as much food as they want, but asks them to drink sparingly. She explains that she closed the tavern to spur people to action. This was apparently largely unsuccessful.
Next, the party traveled to the junkyard and met with Burnwaddle, who was trying to organize the waste disposal. Organic waste had been piling up quite prodigiously since the extinguishing of the Torch, this being the city's sole method of waste disposal. Therefore, preventing a major sewage crisis was imperative, especially as the waterway was already toxic enough and adding more threatened to overtax the systems used to purify it. Poing was especially interested in a project of Burnwadde's, which seemed to be primarily interested in "What is in a light bulb that prevents the filament from combusting?" The pursuit was, it was agreed, interesting, but ultimately not especially useful.
The party then proceeded to the Temple of Brigh, where the priest, Joram Kyte, was in great pain. He explained that he had experienced splitting headaches since the torch went out, noting that he believed that he had started to experience them when the Torch had gone out. Elleigh noted that she experienced those same headaches. He eventually agreed to loan the party a pocketwatch to help them with their journey. He also agreed to leave town as an experiment to determine if the source of the headaches was local (given that several people had them).
The party agreed to prepare for their expedition.
Session 3
The party obtained a very large waterproof bag, procured for them by the town counsel, as well as 6 hours of the water breathing spell from Joram Kyte prior to descending in the diving bell. Upon reaching the prescribed depth, Anton cast light on Elleigh's bandolier to ensure they had light in the cavern.
The pary squeezed through a somehwat windy narrow underwater passage and, upon reaching a subterranian shore, were accosted by bioluminescent beetles, which they dispatched before taking a brief rest to recover full vision in their dazzled and irritated eyes. Around a corner, a trio of foul-smelling moss and mold mounds with what appeared to be potentially ambulatory slimes congregating upon them were noted, and the part opted to evade them.
They passed through a small stalactite/mite-y cavern and came upon the remains of a half-orc some of htem recognized from town named Parda Garr. She was a fairly well-liked brawler who had taken in with a bad crowd lately. The party determined that she had no valuables whatsoever on her. Poing offended the party by suggesting that Parda was now "junk," although he was quick to clarify that she didn't USED TO be junk.
Through a combination of gentle body language and sweet talk, they convinced a blindheim they meant it no harm. In so doing, they were able to retrieve some equipment from the remains of a man (that had been largely stripped of flesh, possibly by the aforementioned blindheim) who had been sunk into the pool and weighted down with stones. They found a few gold and silver, two small potions and a small silver symbol, they determined to be the unholy symbol of Zyphus. Anton suggested that this may have been the town's cleric of Pharasma, Mylan Raldi, although this body wasn't the right build - in fact, he was too tall.
Session 4
The party further explored the cavern, coming upon a junk pile in a small sub-cavern with chalk drawings that Thinghaver determined to be fairly recent, based on a number of factors. They did not approach a cavern full of brown mold that was extraordinarily chilly, instead taking a tunnel where an ominous voice announced that they were surrounded. They called out the sitation and a strange man with chameleon skin who identified himself as Breadknife told them he would take half of them to his leader. Cithreal and Elleigh both suggested that he would not be able to keep them surrounded unless they all came together and he agreed. Sevenknives, upon meeting the party, chastised him.
The leader demanded to know what the party's purpose was. When they explained they were searching for a wizard, she said that she wanted no trouble from wizards because of what happened last time. When they asked what happened, she explained, "I got promoted to leader of the tribe." She further explained that there was a lady with purple hair and pink skin that had instructed and paid her to kill anyone who tried to pursue her deeper into the black cavern, and the tribe of humanoids had been largely successful in doing so, having slain several groups before "the wizard" came and knocked the fight out of the tribe. A large hole in their main cavern was determined to lead to the Darklands (presumably to Nar-Vath) and was from where the tribe of humanoids. The leader implicated herself in killing Parda Garr and Breadknife in killing the priest of Zyphus (who he apparently stabbed in a very straightforward manner of which the leader seemed exceedingly proud). The northern caverns, it was explained, was home to a nest of vicious gremlins. The leader told them she would allow them to pass her domain and show them how to open "the door" (an aperture made of apparently skymetal with a cracked, smoked glass panel in front of it). She explained there was a trick to opening the door, and while Khonnir seemed to "just know" the trick "as if he'd seen it before," she didn't think they would.
The party agreed to clear out the gremlins (which Breadknife described as "annoying and stupid" and insisted they were dangerous because of this), and had a fairly hard-fought fight, thanks in no small part to a bound gremlin who seemed to emanate an aura of foul luck. All the gremlins fled or were slain, save the bound one, which the party determined they would interrogate it. They also noticed another aperture door in the northern part of the cavern.
Session 5
The gremlin that the party captured insisted that their misfortune was because they were not worthy. The creature said that it was a pugwampi and that its aura of unlock was a "blessing" that affected them because they were unworthy. Upon being freed, the malicious little creature fled through the cavern claiming it would return with an army of gnolls before being killed by the humanoids waiting in the main cavern. Amid the trash (which appeared to have been deliberately broken), they located 2 silverdisks (which appeared to be spent batteries.
"You got them all! Except for the ones that you got!" She showed them that the door could be opened with a brown access card, of which she produced 5 access cards that she demonstrrated could open the door by being held in proximity to the glass panel. She finally introduced herself as Sef and explained that she and her people are skulks. They discussed the spelling of this name. They bartered with the Skulks for a healer's kit and 2 healing potions, and recognized that the potions they found earlier were identical to these. They stopped to heal their wounds before proceeding.
Through the door was a curved chamber caved in on each side, beyond which was an airlock that still seemed to function. They found a pair of vice grips on the robot in the room. Thinghaver searched the rubble. The door on the south side of the chamber was not accessible with their current keycard. Thinghaver decided that there were between 1 and 6 creatures in each of a half dozen cages. He could not reverse engineer the shape of such creatures.
The next chamber had two strange machines with nozzles pointing in the room. Anton suggested that this was a sterilization chamber. Poing investigated the steilizares and found access panels on them. The stolen screwdriver Cithreal had was the exact (!) kind required to open the panels. From these, he extracted canisters of sterilant, which he stowed in Clank. When they opened the next chamber, the sterilizers beeped in annoyance, but more susprisingly, the next chamber appeared to be a a cavern with a noontime sun flickering dimly in the sky. The chamber itself resembled a desert, with the shambling skeletons of four-armed aliens pantomiming mundane activities in the chamber.
That party followed a path in the room, apparently ignored by the skeletons, until they reached nearly the center of the room, at which points all the skeletons suddenly became aggressive and converged to attack.
Session 6
The party fought and defeated a number of skeletons, but eventually took shelter in a malfunctioning airlock, which zapped them. Poing, angry about this, destroyed the sterilizers. The party spent an hour licking their wounds (putting them at 2:56 or about 2:45 since they entered). They they attempted to ambush the skeletons, who had rallied and were now surprisingly organized. They managed to nearly kill Elleigh, but the party eventually defeated them all.
The party delayed until 4:10 trying to ensure that Elleigh was healed, but, unfortunately, every attempt to heal her had largely failed. Eventually, she drank a healing potion to restore herself. Poing explored some caverns, which contained little of apparent value, save for an amber necklace containing preserved alien insects.
The party leveled up to level 2.
Session 7
The party found three doors beyond and listened at each, noting a hum behind 2 and none behind a third. Poing uses his card to open the door and beyond takes note of the alphabet. Poing pushes a button and the gray screens went a solid blue with text in the upper left:
æåÐÐæç | æåÐÐæç U æåÐÐæç W
15
Thinghaver became interested in a glowing yellow panel on the purple pillar. Poing broke the keyboard in an effort to put them back together. Poing found that one of the machines was a pokey-pokey and another was a tappy-tapp. Poing discovered that the one on the right is a functional monitor that allowed viewing of the desert. They cycled through the cameras and noted that the numeric systems was base 10 and what all the numbers were.
Thinghaver touched the yellow panel and the blue circular thing hummed to live.
12 buttons on the touchscreen (1 is camera) and 6 on the blue.
Elleigh pushed one that made it way too bright. Poing pushed one that made it spark and injured him mildly. Poing pushed another button that displayed a documentary on the creates from the desert.
They explored a bit more and came to a room with a zombified one of the strange creatures in it. They had a back and forth where they established that they could not communicate well with it and it was hostile. Unholy symbols of Zyphus were in the
Elleigh discovered Black striped card and the party discussed whether to double back or continue forward
A yellow triangle with beveled edges flat side up appears when they try to scan on the door the "purple lady went through."
Time: 4:43 PM
They went through a door that reuqired the black
Elleigh touches a button which, in turn, plays an extremely loud warning klaxxon.
26 silverdisks and 3 that are glowing with a soft blue glow and a flashlight.
They also found a bin they couldn't open with their current badge level. They affixed it to Xerxes to carry.
They made their way into a bloostained hallway with signs of a struggle between organic and inorganic creatures.