Jacqueline Clark
Session Sunday 15th – “ You only need 1 hit point, the rest is just confidence!”
[OOC - the above quote from the game just amused me! I've not been able to put pictures in the text so I'll talk to Ed about getting them in later. Also the actual numbers 'addresses' in this account probably wouldn't be discussed in the inn but I've put them in the text so everyone has the information]
Kallista, Briar, Xyrxina, Effie & Brys, walk into the inn, dirty, tired but with big grins on their faces.
Hey guys! Well we made it back alive & with a fair bit more information. This tale may take a while so grab a drink, pull up a chair & get comfortable.
After a bit of discussion in this very inn myself & Kallista were joined by some new adventurers (indicates Xyrxina, Effie & Brys) to go search for more information on the builders & where they came from, to this end I had a collection of the coloured bolts which had been collected earlier in my possession. Kallista had suggested a route to a white building she had seen from up at Kaskans farm & we were all happy to follow her plan.
We set off early following the usual route down behind the waterfall to the plain, (the entrance still seems pretty well hidden but we may want to start keeping an eye on that). Down on the plain we followed the west side of the river down to the entrance to the forest, we camped in the dell that me & kallista & a few others have camped in before however before settling down I noticed signs of a previous fight possibly with a Kenku as there were black feathers on the ground they looked a few weeks old so we made sure to keep careful watch but decided to remain there for the night.
During the dawn watch with me & Brys, just before the sun came up I heard a woman scream followed by animal noises, however after a few noises I realise it is the same noises repeated and immediately realise it is a / some kenku. We wake the others and warn them of the noises, we notice the noises split around us following the closest sound we spy 1 kenku sneaking towards us, Xyrxina climbs a tree and spy’s a second kenku from across the river, she draws her bow and expertly shoots it in the head, it staggers but miraculously remain upright & heads closer to the party, Brys charges the kenku in the woods, he misses by an inch but as it moves out of reach catches it a pretty hard blow, Effie, Kalista & myself all attempt spells that miss, however we then hear a dog bark in the woods, a 3rd kenku appears & settles under Xyrxinas tree, She drops on it, very much taking it by surprise & with 2 particularly effective blows kills it before it has chance to react, Brys manages to strike another blow to the kenku by him which knocks it to the ground dead, the injured kenku has managed to jump the river however is spotted by Effie who deftly casts fire which quickly dispatches this last one. A bit of a rude awakening but thankfully no injuries, we collect any useful items and place the bodies away from camp in the style of an air burial I had seen them use previously.
Whilst cleaning and packing up we spot the –now a bit more waterlogged – log we had used to cross before and crossed to the east side of the river, we followed a worn path along the edge of the woodland which leads behind the hills where the ‘temple of healing’ is found.
Some way along this edge we spot a statue of a stylised fox, a broken arch and some ruins of a building. On the arch there is a carved symbol of a shepherds crook with an eye in the centre, the symbol of Ioun the goddess of knowledge, skill & prophecy, and a fox motif around the building work. Inside the building Brys sees lots of coloured stone which when cleared show a mosaic of the building as it stood in open grassland, it shows a white building with a tower to one side styled like a builder tower. To the side of this mosaic is a solid stone slab, once cleared it looks like it could move, with a bit of effort, Brys, Kalista & Effie get it lifted & it shows a chamber underneath, after checking it seemed unoccupied Brys took a rope and climbed down & we followed, we found several old damp destroyed books a couple of silver chalices with the symbol of Ioun on (which we will return to their worshipers) and an inscription on the wall
Translated by Kallista as:
‘Hatan’ the day’s work has begun, following the steps of the long ago ones. We hear their words, we sing their songs. Sealed in white against the night. Blessed Ioun shows the way, sing ’Sonjon!’ at the end of the day.
This provides a fair amount of discussion but we don’t really know what it means except that Ioun’s worshipers were here after the builders… So we head out and replace the slab before leaving the forest.
Here we cut across the grassland towards another forest as we cut across Xyrxina recognises goblin tracks cutting through the grass towards the forest behind the hills & temple of healing, I remember we saw smoke from that direction on our first excursion 7 assume the goblins have an encampment there but that is not for exploration now.
We continue around the forest edge until it skirts south & we come to a large sandy & earthy mound, we camp overnight in a small sheltered spot at the base. Next day we continue around the bluff and cut between the bluff and the northern edge of a forest.
Around late morning we see another fox statue in the woods, exploring a little further we find several fox statues all looking towards a single spot further into the woods, as we walk towards this point Kallista falls over something that turns out to be the fingers of what looks like a blue builder statue buried in the ground, we dig down and find the whole arm, it appears the whole statue is there, looking around further we find dozens of hands or bits of statue, digging down & around there are multiple groups of statues, some with hands covering their faces, others embraced in groups, their body positions, that we can see, all look as if they are distressed. Looking further afield we find further fox statues all looking towards the builders, and ruins of another larger building. Nearby we find a large screw mechanism, inside the ruins of a circular tower some 20ft across we find a large stone slab cracked down the middle but with a circle & hexagon engraved on it and another screw. Outside we find a large arch capstone, this is engraved with builder runes indicating ‘En ta tra ta an’ however the carving does not look the same & we suggest this may have been carved later, possibly by the Ioun people or others attempting to ‘fix’ the building.
We had a lot of discussion as to what could have buried those statues, was it a fire mountain or landslide, but the ruined tower appeared to be at current ground level, had this been moved later or uncovered? We really needed to move on but that area needs a lot of further investigation and Brys says a bigger party to dig!
Once back between the wood edge & the bluff we decide to camp up, after a wet but uneventful night we set off again, once at the end of the bluff we realise we need to get our bearings on the new building as it would be easy to miss in the forest, Brys tries to climb the bluff but it’s just a bit too steep without a rope, Xyrxina thinks she can see a route and proves there are advantages to being a high elf and reaches the top with apparent ease, she takes a bearing for the building & a few landmarks to keep us on the right path, however whilst she’s there she notices a ‘big’ body of water in the far distance, bigger than anything she’d ever seen before. She returns to the ground and tells us all about what she’s seen and leads us through the forest, we found the building in the late afternoon, it is the same as En ta tra ta shan, a rectangular building with a tower at one end, this one however doesn’t look like it’s ever been found before, the building & tower look intact and there’s even a fair bit of the silver filigree in place around the tower but it is really overgrown on the outside with moss, creepers, vines & even trees & roots growing all over. Kallista spots the indented doorway first with En ta tra ta noor in runes above, she says ‘Daresh En ta tra ta noor’ and the door disappears.
We look inside, this room is clean & undisturbed however we immediately notice there are 2 very large (approx. 9ft tall) skeletons inside the room lying fallen, there are scraps of material visible but nothing else on the skeletons. Around the room we find 1 crystal & 3 tools;
Tool 1, looks like my healing rod,
Tool 2, looks like the blade Aila has
Tool 3, nothing we’ve seen before, like a crescent or circlet with a hole for a bolt.
We try with the bolts we have the first 2 items take the green bolt & behave as before, the other doesn’t fit any of the bolts I’m carrying.
I explained what we found in En ta tra ta shan, about the indents in the wall into the next chamber. Brys looks as I point up to where they should be, he sees the same indents, and places his fingers in them, the others sensibly standing back. As the wall disappears 2 more large skeletons fall as if they were leaning on the wall, one falls onto me!, Brys manages to jump out of the way. But these skeletons are different, the bones are black & mottled, as they fall they collapse into dark ash. Shaken I stand for a second before realising Xyrxina is yelling at us all to get outside! We go out & Xyrxina makes us all wash in a nearby stream.
Once were all washed we head back inside nothing else has moved, inside the room under the table we see the same device on the floor but this one has a full complement of bolts, there is also a similar circle & hexagon design on the wall with 2 points of light.
The lowest point Kallista remembered matched the position of one seen at En ta tra ta shan, the second hadn’t been seen.
We examine the floor and removing the purple bolt try it in the crescent, it fits & activates it but doesn’t seem to do anything. It appears to be of the size it would fit around one of the builders heads, Brys is keen to try it on but we talk him out of it, for now..
This room has an intact table with filigree & indents for the crystals, we place the crystal on the table, it projects an image as before,
We see a golden city, but there are signs of panic, platforms & buildings in the sky are crashing down, builders are running, A black cloud is rising in a golden fiery sky, the city is blackening, the buildings twisting, we see a group of 4 builders running into a teleport station, they activate the gate, emerge into another station, 1 reaches and appears to randomly scramble the bolts, they emerge at another teleport station. 2 of the builders start to convulse, the others jump away into the other room and seal the wall. Then a look of horror crosses their faces as they realise the outer door is closed and they don’t know the exit number.
We look at each other in horror as we realise we’ve just seen the fate of the 4 builders in this tower. This leads to a lot of discussion about the fate of the builders here & in general. We know the builders could control the statues therefore we wondered if the statues we found earlier were being controlled by builders within the city as it was destroyed which would explain their poses of distress if not the reasons why they’re buried.
Kallista and others have used the teleport system to move to other areas therefore we know the position of the bolts is like an address of where they want to go. After a bit of talking we replay the crystal a few time to try to identify the positions of the bolts prior to each of the ‘jumps’ the builders made.
Xyrxina identifies the first jump number (clockwise from top) is; ika[6] desh [0] desh [0] desh [0] desh [0] ur [4]
The second; desh [0] en [1] ta [2] tra [3] ta [2] noor [9] (ie where we are).
In their panic she sees them touch the bottom light on the wall which is the same circle& hexagon but the lights are immediately left of the top point & slightly right of the bottom Left point (same as one of the dots we see), as she touches it the bolts are at 600004, then the second circle hexagon has 3 light dots, the same as the first plus the dot near the bottom point (second dot we see here) the builders change the bolts to 012329.
We presume both teleports must be set to each other for the connection to be made, the bolts on the floor are at 10, 0, 10, 10 (?)3, 10. We had moved the purple bolt but were pretty sure it was in the 3 position.
To test our assumption we changed the bolt positions to see what happened, we tried:
- - En ta tra ta an (which we knew was destroyed as it’s the statue area) we see a red light over a blue light on the wall which blinks out.
- - 242629 [I think this is the snowy place kallista went too?] the light blinks on & off on the wall in a new position, we then notice a smell of burning, outside we see scorched trees & roots that were growing on the tower.
- - 012328 (we assume this is near but not found yet) a light blinks blue, Xyrxina outside reports a beam of white light shooting horizontally out to the east, ? not got full bolts or not set to en ta tra ta noor therefore not connecting.
- - Entatratashan (01232?) The beam of white light shoots out to the west, the light blinks on the wall but nothing happens when pressed, we know they don’t have a full set of bolts however.
We reset to 10,0,10,10,3,10 the light on the wall (bottom left) brightens then returns to a continuous light. Someone touches the light, a golden light appears above the teleport, a voice says
“ Doe Hatan talenka. Desh en ta tra ta noor, an desh an an tra an”
Xyrxina steps through, we stand around for a few minutes then she returns. She tells us she stepped through saw the same circle/hexagon on the wall with 3 lights, ? this means it was the ‘hub’ & indicates both sides need to be programmed / connected. She thinks this means the city is still connected to that area. She reports the building is intact, the wall was open to the main room but the outer door was shut, and it felt chilly inside the building, she said it only took a minute then she came back, but we’d noticed she’d been gone for at least 3 minutes!..
We all think we should go back to see outside the building, as people are going through I shut the outer door, just in case any goblins or others have seen the lights & come to see whats going on!
Once were all there we see the rooms as before, Xyrxina checks the inner door works before saying daresh an desh an an tra an. The door opens.. nothing happens!.. it’s dark outside, a leaf blows in and gets shot at! We look outside, those with dark vision see the area is open grassy plain, few scattered trees & leaves & a few copses of trees but absolutely flat. Its cold & looking at the trees & leaves we think it’s mid winter here. The whiteness of other towers can be seen going off in a line.
We can see stars, which form the same constellations as we see at home & the ‘black path’ of darkness without stars is visible. Off in the distance they can see hills to the sides. We think this area is somewhere on our world but about 8 hours ahead of where we have come from, we need to explore there in daylight but for safety decide return to the other tower to sleep.
Once back we try 600004 to test Xyrxinas theory that both sides need to be ‘set’ to connect, we get a blinking light, we take this as confirming the site is active but both sites need to be set to each other for the connection to work.
After about 8 hours of sleep/ rest we return to an desh an an tra an. The sun is just coming up, we can all see the plains with scattered trees, we can hear birds, there appears to be a lake to the north, a few farms and a small town on the edge of the lake. We see blue coloured mountains off to the east & west. The building itself and the filigree is intact as though no one disturbs them. We decide that this area needs a lot more planning before going off to explore so decide to return with plans to come back again. As we leave Xyrxina stays outside to watch as the first person returns, she sees no beam of light this time though. We shut the outer door before all returning to en ta tra ta noor.
Once there we remove the bolts from the floor and we take the tools, however Brys still really wants to try the circlet on, as he does so he grins widely, takes it off, puts it back on grinning. He takes it off & says whilst he’s wearing it he feels like he could convince us to do anything.. we all try it on (Me with a little help to kind of hold it in place!) we all get the same feeling. We take all the artifacts & bolts back, mostly so we can do more investigation, possibly with several groups going to different sites & trying to link up to see if we can get a bit more detail about how these things work. One thing we are all definite on is that no-one should try to go to the city! Until we know what caused the destruction of the city we cannot risk that coming back to our world.
Ed Chivers
- The World Timeline - https://thevalley.boreworms.com/wiki/World_Timeline - has been updated to include a mention of this expedition in the recent history section
- A new page has been added for the culture who left the fox statues in the woods - https://thevalley.boreworms.com/wiki/Fox_people
- A new page has been added for Entatrataan - https://thevalley.boreworms.com/wiki/Entatrataan