12/10/2023 -- Special Operation Enola 1

• We (Andreas, Bloom, Damon, Talisman, Thomas, Varos) pick up in Zetian’s cabin around 8am, just after he’s given us the general mission brief. He reminds us not to forget the dog treats, and sends us on the slide back to camp. Thomas sets out to ask Castellan for fermented mustard, and ends up being given the ingredients to make mustard, in order to make a bathtub’s worth.
• Andreas, Talisman, and Thomas go to the Rat Races, while Bloom and Varos go to talk to Margaux, and Damon goes off to talk to Claudia. Bloom and Varos find Margaux first, while she’s going over notes – she asks what they want, and Bloom says he hasn’t gotten to really speak to her since the hospital, and wanted to see how she had settled in, but doesn’t know why Varos is here. Varos jokes that fine, he’ll be the traitor. She then invites them to play Go Fish, and they accept.
• She deals the cards, saying as she goes that Kynaston’s got her working for him again, and that she’s been getting a lot of reports of spirits, but most of them have been false – the only real case she’s had was a ghost haunting a family for leaving it behind.
• She then asks what we’re up to, and Bloom tells her that Zetian’s sending us up a mountain. She asks if it has to do with the priest, and we say no, but Varos tells her we found the body of another priest at the base of a tree. She is very excited about this, and tells us a bit more about how much she hates priests; they’re basically all idiots who don’t know anything about their gods, and whenever they’re called to handle an exorcism, they either handle it wrong or get possessed, and just generally make her life a lot harder.
• We shift to the Rat Races, where Polkadots is dominating. Talisman tries to look like he isn’t enjoying it, but is immensely, and joins in the chanting under his breath.
• Next, Damon goes to Claudia’s tent, and finds her inside her coffin, having chained it shut. He knocks on the coffin to talk to her, and she says she had another soldier lock her in, because she’s trying to experiment. He asks if he can unlock it, and she agrees – he lets her out, and she invites him on a walk, after deciding it’s a nice day out. They have a pleasant walk, and she offers for him to stay in the sun with her while she reads a book, but he declines, saying he’ll spend more time with her after this mission.
• At this point, we move on to the mission. The commander (Ryan) spends 1 intel, and asks two questions – for the first, he asks what two approaches we can take on this mission are. We get the choice between a stealthy or speedy approach, which will determine whether or not we get there before dark, our chance of being spotted, and the amount of energy we might use. We also ask what items would be useful to bring on this mission, and are told climbing equipment. The quartermaster (Jonah) spends 1 scrap material to get this.
  • We also, in this preparatory time, spend 3 recovery to remove Talisman and Thomas’s corruption.
• The marshal (Jamie) makes the engagement roll, and we start with a risky position (rolled: 1, 4, 4). The stealthy approach is slow going, with difficult terrain and overgrown routes. We each lose 10 stamina in this trek, and arrive at the base of the mountain around 5pm. The mountain is only about a half-mile or ¾ of a mile tall, but has sheer, jagged rocks. Damon climbs up about halfway with us, before dashing up higher with his speedster power, in order to scout ahead.
• He climbs higher, and finds an outcropping where things are odd – there are more shadows than there should be up here, and from these shadows strange creatures emerge, revealed to be shadow-wrapped deer. He enters combat, with the deer all before him in the order roll. They swarm him, killing him with their animus drain ability. The rest of the group continue the climb with no idea anything is wrong, and only find his body after he’s been dead for a while.
• Bloom inspects the body, and notices it seems shriveled and drained, despite the lack of physical wounds – his actual soul must have been drained. We decide to press on and collect his body on the way back, and Talisman whispers a prayer for Damon’s soul. We continue to climb, and make a physical check, with Benefit II thanks to our climbing equipment. At one point, Talis slips a bit and falls back on Varos, and it seems like they might fall, but Andreas and Thomas are able to help them recenter, and we make it up without issue.
• 10-15 ft or so ahead of us, we see ashes covering the ground. Bloom is allowed to make a spirit check based on vibes to see if the ashes are weird (2 successes), and sees that the ashes are in the shape of a large wolf’s body, confirmed to resemble Damon’s. Bloom gets a hero point for guessing that with his soul having been drained, there’s probably a shadow version of Damon running around.
• We make it to the top of the path and find a cliffside, with a number of cut-down trees and a few red maples. The ground is overgrown with thick and tangled roots, but there’s a pristine walkway leading up to a door flush with the side of the cliff. Andreas makes a physical check to look for any traps along the pathway (2 successes), and finds that the way is clear. Bloom finds a small iron key in a keyhole on the left side of the door, and “my rings recount the years I’ve seen” is written in Dwarvish.
• We go to count the rings on the exposed stumps, and find that the four stumps are 7 years old, 1 year old, 4 years old, and 9 years old. Bloom pulls the key out of the keyhole, and it instantly goes cold, returning to normal temperature when it’s placed back in the keyhole. Andreas takes the key and plays hot or cold with it, eventually being led to an area of churned-up soil. He digs up from that spot a small wooden box, with a series of Dwarvish numbers (1-9) carved into it. He hands the box to Bloom, and we try “4971”. The key begins to glow, and goes back to a normal temperature – Andreas tries it again in the door, and it unlocks successfully.
• We find ourselves in the entrance to a great laboratory, a square room with lead-lined walls, lit by blue torches. We see glass vials with mystery concoctions, crystal vats humming with latent powers, and an astrolabe in the center, along with some celestial maps close to it, and a rune-etched table. There is also a hall that leads deeper into the chamber.
• We discuss taking some of the potions, but decide against it. Bloom looks for dog treats, and doesn’t see any, but does find a dog bed that contains a few chew toys – some bones, pieces of rope, and a few small plastic swords with rubbery ends. He also looks at the astrolabe to see if something in particular is being tracked, and discerns that something might be, but this seems like it’s mainly meant for documentation and cross-referencing.
• Talisman also inspects the etched runes, and recognizes ones for fire and light. There are also some language-based ones he doesn’t recognize.
• We go down the hall, and find an intersection with three doors – one to our left, labeled “hemotracer”, one to our right, labeled “pharmacraft”, and a middle one that is unlabeled. These labels are in common.
• We go into the left room first, and find a clean and pristine room that appears to be a small workshop, with a lot of work desks and tables covered in scrap materials and tools. In the center of the room is a cylindrical pedestal surrounded by a spherical golden energy field, at the heart of which floats what appears to be a long rod attached by a swinging mechanism to a sphere. It seems like the rod would be free-swinging like a pendulum if you held it by the sphere. We assume this is the jigger-wagger.
• After some debate, Thomas reaches out to poke the forcefield. Nothing happens, so he grabs the jigger-wagger, and finds it has some grooves along the sphere’s surface, with some kind of panel. He flips it open, and inside finds some particles and dust in the container – it seems like there was probably a gemstone in there before. We loot the desks for 2 scrap before heading into the room on the right.
• Andreas goes into the room first, and finds a refinery. The space is full of machines refining raw materials, and the left-hand hall is filled with (at the very least) thousands of blood vials, each labeled with a name, a date, and the Ring it was extracted from. Towards the end of the room is a table with final containers and flasks used to add in ingredients. We see two barrels of grey oil, and realize this room is used to refine it. Thomas grabs the last blood vial marked as a success – the label reads “Lothbrok, Hrathur | 708 AR | Beacon”. We discuss trying to use the machinery to refine more grey oil, but decide to push on for the moment. We loot the barrels as we go, and get 2 uses of grey oil out of it.
• We open the middle door, with Andreas again leading, and find a janitor’s closet, with mops, brooms, and assorted knick-knacks. Talisman looks for dog treats, and finds a bag of them sitting directly in front of a lever. He takes them and pulls the lever, and a back panel splits into two doors, revealing a dark hallway. Andreas checks for traps, and finds that the hall’s floor is covered in tripwires, in a massive spiderwebbing pattern.
• Varos stays behind, but everyone else pushes forward, and gets the choice to make either a physical or mental check, both at benefit I, to make it past the tripwires – avoiding them requires 2 successes. Those of us going all pass, and we come to another room lit by blue torches. Along the walls of the room are thick, unlabeled black tomes, each of them thousands of pages. There’s a board on the back wall of the room, with mad scrawlings in all sorts of languages; Elvish, Dwarvish, some Giant, Orcish, Sylvan… there are arrows and interconnecting lines, but in the center is a word in common that’s been circled: “Xeroxixia”.
• Bloom and Talis both make mental checks to see if they recognize the word. With 1 success, Talisman doesn’t recognize it, but the construction of the word seems formal to him. With 2 successes, Bloom instantly recognizes “Xix”, the king of the titans, a being of myth that fought the gods. His world twists once again, and he finds himself at a dinner table, with Dima to his right.
• Dima smiles at him, and asks how work was – Bloom responds that it was fine, he thinks, though it was a bit of a blur. Dima goes on to ask if they can try to get a bigger house, and Bloom agrees it’s a good idea, to give Ilia some more space to run around. Dima goes on to mention a new settlement called Gravisburg, where a new mine is opening up. He knows Bloom would have to find a new temple, but thinks maybe Bloom could start a new one near the mine; the land is cheap over there.
• Bloom slowly agrees, saying he thinks he can find more worshippers of… he pauses, and stumbles over his words, before saying that yes, he’d be willing to do that for Ilia. The vision ends, and he tells the others the word has something to do with Xix. He tries to read some of the notes on the board, and is able to make out “star pattern”, “omens 0 out of 3”, and “blood”. We debate what this could mean, but agree it’s nothing good.
• After some hesitation, we open one of the tomes on the shelves, and find a family tree, a whole history tracing bloodlines across the Primordial Ring. Each book appears to be part of a set, with the book Bloom picked up being 288 out of 2431. These records seem to span not just the Primordial Ring, but track bloodlines across the Prime Ring and Dark Ring, as well. We’re all thoroughly unnerved, and decide to leave; we’re worried about the shadow-wrapped creatures being more of an issue in the dark, but decide it’s better to risk them than it is to camp in the lab.
• We close up the lab behind us, and Andreas reburies the box. With only the crescent moon in the sky, it’s almost completely dark, and as we descend, Thomas sees a horde of shadowy creatures scurrying along a cliff face, including a humanoid shadow, large and black, with pale red eyes. We decide to keep moving, and eventually make it back to Damon’s body. We take it back with us, and make it back to camp a little past midnight. We leave Damon’s body in the center of the Venerable Hounds section of camp, before Andreas and Thomas go to report to Zetian.
• Zetian is initially very excited about our successfully getting the jigger-wagger and the dog treats, and gives us the day off, but grows confused and upset when Andreas says Damon died, asking what he means (and repeating it in a shout when he doesn’t respond). Andreas says he takes full responsibility, and Zetian says yes, he will, before telling him to get out of its sight.
• Zetian then looks to Thomas, asking what happened. Thomas says Damon ran ahead to scout, and found… a trap, or something, we don’t know. We found him at the base of a cliff. Thomas is trying very hard not to cry as he relays this, and Zetian thanks him, before saying that he’ll break it to Cordell, but he’ll need us to break it to everyone else. He then dismisses Thomas, who gives a stiff bow and exits. Behind him, he hears Zetian having an absolute fit, throwing things around the room.
• We decide to move camp, and head for Bayuex. We use 1 horse to reduce the number of dice, but still roll a 6 and get +3 time. We’re attacked as we move, and enter mass combat – the commander rolls a d20+4, while the Impure roll a d20+7 (our current pressure -2). Ryan wins the roll-off (19 against 17), so we’re successful, only losing 100 soldiers (leaving us at 1900 soldiers and 3 Archfey). Everyone lower than 4th level gains a level.