02/04/2024 -- Operation Righteous Fury

• Date: 52 Lionnir 715AR. Starring Zey (commander), Talisman (marshal), Andreas (quartermaster), Thomas (spymaster), Bloom (lorekeeper), and Varos (no role).
• We pick up with Zey in camp. There’s a rainstorm, and he’s got his tent flap open, playing with the water. He decides he needs the A-team, the best of the best, and goes off to collect the clowns. He says everyone is aware of the church (he gives Talis a look here), and tells us we have a mission to relocate their resources to a more favorable location… without them knowing. He insists it’s “relocating” when Thomas says it’s stealing.
• Talis shrugs, and says he’s in – they saw they were holding resources. Everyone else agrees, as well. Zey says the operation will be conducted with Dark-Eye Brenn, who gives a wave. Brenn says that the last time they broke into the church, they sneaked in through the main doorway, but that that probably won’t work a second time. Bloom says he knows of a secret entrance, and Brenn says he’s glad they’re bringing him, and that it’ll almost make up for Bloom murdering his friends.
  • This is news to Andreas, and Brenn tells him his “bastard friends” killed his men – Bloom argues that they attacked first, and the two bitch at each other before eventually being interrupted.
• The group splits up to prepare for the mission. Bloom and Andreas go gambling, Talis and Zey go to the watchtower, and Thomas goes to the Rat Races. Varos goes to see Margaux.
  • Talis and Zey chat about the landscape, with Talis wondering what the landscape looked like before the Impure got there. He asks if Zey knows what happened to the color, and Zey doesn’t have a clue, but guesses it was something powerful. Talis asks why they’re doing the mission, and Zey says that Cordell expelled him from helping her, and since he’s gonna die anyway, he may as well do as much good for the camp as he can, and potentially go out in a blaze of glory. He made a drunk deal with Brenn, but he doesn’t like them withholding their resources. They also talk about the church, and Talis says the church shouldn’t be here; as far as he’d known, they were localized in the Unclaimed Lands.
    • The two of them apply the extra 1d6 they get to Physical.
  • Varos, at Margaux’s, is just trying to get himself together. She tries to calm him down, and gives him some tea. He gets a hero point.
• The spymaster rolls [1, 4, 4] and gains nothing. The commander spends 1 intel to ask about a useful item, and is told something to pick locks – this would be great if we had the scrap to make lockpicks, but we don’t, and the only person who has lockpicks is Ari. Zey spends 1 recovery on himself, and the quartermaster spends a supply wagon.
• The engagement roll is made to get us through the secret entrance [5, 5, 2, 2]. We head to the secret entrance and continue deeper, trying to navigate the dead-end passageways. We lose 5sp each as we go, and get spotted by a guard – we get away, but have been seen. We come to a strange door at the end of a hallway, and Zey peeks inside, to see a room of tools and supplies.
• Bloom makes the first rummage check [4] going through the chests. There’s a lot of cutlery, sandpaper, etc – all luxury items, fairly useless to the Brigade. We get +1 supply and +2 scrap. There are two more doors, one north and one east. We open the eastern one, and find an area with alchemical supplies lining the walls, and a lab set up at the far end. Two alchemists in Corania’s vestments are working vigorously.
• Bloom makes a mental check [1 success] to determine what they’re making – it’s some sort of fine grey powder, but he can’t tell what. We decide to knock them unconscious, and Zey sends Bloom and Thomas to knock them out. Thomas knocks his unconscious, and Bloom accidentally kills his. Brenn is passive-aggressive about this.
• We discover they’re making magical amphetamines – a dose or two can keep someone awake for literal days, and they’ve got about 80lb of it here. Varos moves to break the crates, and Thomas stops him. We also find a lot of medicines, categorized and labeled, equivalent to +40 recovery. Taking it all would require loading the supply wagon fully, so we decide to take +20 of it. Brenn takes the recovery back to the wagon for us [Brandon rolls 2d6 for him to stay quiet, and is successful]. Exploring further, we find the door to Zhret Tatnai’s private room.
• We debate about entering it, wondering if he’s inside, until Zey points out it’s dinnertime, so he’s probably out of his quarters eating. Talis is still worried because the Zhrets are diviners, but Bloom says he might be lying about that. Talis agrees he’s probably been lying, but he does believe Tatnai has powers of some kind. Varos wants to go in and just start stabbing if someone is in there – Thomas is concerned about how stabby Varos has been recently, but Varos says that’s none of his business.
• Bloom listens at the door [2 successes, after a full reroll], and doesn’t hear anything. We decide to go in, and Varos tries to pick the lock with his dagger. The server goes down when he tries to roll, and we spend like a half hour trying to get it back up. God lets Varos succeed on the check without rolling as consolation, and Varos peeks into the room. It’s absolutely gaudy inside, with gilded tapestries and a massive 4-poster bed. There are intricate carvings in the wood depicting what seem to be travelers across a field. Precious gems and artifacts are on shelves around the room in glass cabinets, and there’s a floor-to-ceiling portrait of Tatnai.
• Bloom tries to check if there’s anything behind the portrait [0 successes], and finds nothing. Talis checks, too, and notices some tracks on the floor indicating the portrait is approached often, and sees some fading on the portrait where it’s been grabbed in the past. He tries to push, pull, and slide it, but it doesn’t budge. Bloom looks for a button [3 successes], and finds one in the back of a desk drawer. He pushes it, and it does nothing, but he does find a false back in the drawer. He finds a 1st-level power stone, and an up-to-date map of the entire region, all the way from Tpres to Widowstone Keep.
• Bloom tells everyone at the map, and warns them he may have pushed an alarm button. Zey cuts open the portrait, and finds a stairway. He can hear people down there. Before we go down, Talisman makes a rummage check [1] to find sensitive documents, and while he doesn’t find any, he does find a battleax under Tatnai’s bed – while the wielder is at max, the dmg rating increases by 3.
• We go downstairs, making stealth checks. We find a room with a series of runes covering the wall, and an archway in the center. An exhausted-looking dwarven man stands next to it, his beard greying despite him being fairly young. A dragonborn man lays on the ground, his heart having exploded. Zey sneezes, and the dwarf looks around, asking who’s there. He moves forward, and Thomas goes to bonk him. The dwarf’s eyes go wide, and he starts to go, “hello, my name is Z–” before he’s knocked out.
• We inspect the arch. At the top of it is a nine-pointed star, with different alchemical glyphs and symbols, and it hums with a bit of power. Zey looks over the corpse, and sends the blood “somewhere” – he hits it with a flash of energy from his Torvian, and the blood disappears. He takes a badge from the corpse, and shows it to Talisman, but Talisman doesn’t recognize it. Zey also pockets 100g of the “thunder powder”.
• Bloom fails a mental check to identify if the symbol is Corania’s, and asks Talisman, who says it isn’t. He looks at the badge, and feels pain in the back of his head as he looks over it – he’s not sure from where, but he thinks he’s seen the star symbol before. He relays this to the others, and Andreas asks if it’s from his past. Bloom says probably, but that most of his memories have involved Titans, so it’s probably linked to that. We debate if the church has strayed from Corania, or if they’ve been using Corania as a front. Talis seems convinced that what's happening here is an exception when it comes to worship of Corania.
• There are footsteps and movement behind the door. Andreas listens to the door [2 successes, after a roll reroll], skirting around the arch to do so, and hears grunting and metal clanging. He smells food cooking on the other side. He peeks through the door, and sees a conveyor belt leading deeper, and some boxes close to the door. People are moving boxes, trays, etc. There’s a strong smell of food from the far door. At some point around here, Brandon gets a hero point for guessing the church has a way to move this weirdly permanent-looking setup they have.
• Thomas creeps in to peek around the corner, and sees people moving boxes off of the belt. He opens one up, and finds gold coins, armor, swords, etc. In another, he finds bandages, bedding, tent supplies, spare clothes, and so on. He and Zey attempt to knock out the workers in here – the guys are drugged out of their minds, so it’s not difficult. We find another room with boxes, and a great table with silver trays. We smell food from underneath them, and see a door leading further in. We decide to take two supply boxes, and blow up the archway with the explosives they have down here.
• Varos looks for knives, and finds two that match his – he combines them into one knife, and the blade glows slightly, becoming almost translucent. His weapon is no longer dormant. Andreas looks for information on Torvians, but since he doesn’t find any, settles on grabbing scrap (+3). No one else looks for anything specific, and instead contributes to grabbing supplies.
• Zey moves the unconscious(/dead, in one case) bodies into the room, so that they’ll be out of range of the blast. Bloom touches the side of the archway, and finds it’s slightly warm. He tries to memorize the runes. Talisman uses his rune magic to inscribe a message into the storeroom wall.
  • From the writings of Master-Zhret Adsach on the intentions and will of Her Lady Corania, pages 30-31: In a famine, you should allow others to eat their fill before you take your first bite. In a drought, you should pass around your own water flask to the young and the sick.  In times of peace, resources should be accumulated for the good of the people; in times of distress, these resources should be freely given to those in need... Never should there be excess in any Church of her Lady, for that means a failing in the execution of her will.
• Varos lights the fuse on the dynamite, and we book it, making it into the tunnels. The explosion goes on behind us, and we’re hit by the shockwave. We hear pandemonium above, and come out to see Brenn sitting on the cart. He asks what happened, and we tell him we blew up a portal, and that we’re going now. We hurriedly pack everything on the cart and go. We make it back to camp, though we wait outside for a bit for things to calm down.
• We cut to Master Zhret Tatnai, standing in the storage room and reading Talisman’s message. He smiles, and draws a rune in the air, erasing the message. He draws a second rune, and says, “they’ve been inside. Nothing to worry about, though. We’re still on schedule, sir.” The clerics begin to rebuild, since they still own what’s below in that temple. We end here, and everyone takes a level-up [Talisman gets 2].