2024/06/05: Rescuing Miles Report

General Summary

Terana, Knight, Zaran, Kal'vus, Buzz, Sith   The party slept the night back at the farm. They awoke on the morning of the 26th, ready to go once more. Hoen was still working on his disease to counter the hostile disease. The party considered their options: They could go and stomp the cult that sent the demonic crow, but they had also just received a message from a counterespionage governmental organization asking for a meetup. It was suspicious, asking for a meeting in a suspiciously neutral park. Terana decided to accept.   (Aside: Gork came with the party. He and Edna were interested in getting in on morning sparring.)   While the fighters, barbarians, and monks were enjoying testing themselves against each other, Buzz was boosting the power of the scanner. It ended up boosted significantly.   The party piled into the van and headed to the 1 o'clock meeting. Knight, Azhar, Ngel Sfet, and Gork stayed in the van to dissuade thieves and serve as reserves.   The rest of the group met a woman in a trenchcoat in the park. Dirty blonde hair and a newspaper. She asked if the party was involved with a weeniemobile.   After they moved to a more private spot, the woman informed the adventurers that some sort of giant mechanical creatures kidnapped Miles Gargos from the caravan. Whatever they were, they were serious bad news. They basically walked through a level 3 wall, something that's supposed to be useful in surviving cruise missiles. Multiple government organizations are scrambling to try to figure out what happened and where they went.   This woman was mostly just there to warn the party that these things might be coming for the party too. She wasn't asking for them to actually help in tracking Miles down, but she wasn't going to turn down their offer of help.   The party used Knight's compass and Zaran's Ao-backed find the path to track where Miles is now. He appeared to be somewhere to the north. Before chasing that lead, the party wanted to see what they might be dealing with, so they stopped by the military base to the south. It looked like whatever big creatures had attacked were insectoid or crablike bipeds with pointed legs reminiscent of Knight's. They had pushed through the wall with brute strength. They may also have expulsion fields of some sort.   Knight happened to start swapping out his charms while waiting, and while doing so he noticed that the odd pearl Zella's dream ghost had dropped was standing out as charm-equippable. He tried slotting it in. It turned out to take up all his charm slots. The effects were unclear: Mostly it made him feel warm inside in a way separate from temperature, but there were indications that it had something to do with making dreams come true. Basic experimentation gave no conclusive results, but it was definitely doing something. Dream worlds actually felt more solid and immutable when he had it on.   However dangerous the upcoming fights might be, Knight decided to keep the charm on. Whatever it did, it had to be worth the sacrifice of all the other capabilities his other charms could provide.   Zaran's path led to an abandoned factory in the middle of the city. Terana pulled the locked door off. Zaran's find the path cut off as the party went further into the building. Terana found a very stealthy skeever in the back rooms and chatted with him to get some info and a path past the various traps in the building.   The party was led through the trap-free rat path after shapeshifting or getting small to fit. Got to another room with a hatch in the floor. The hatch was geared and opening it would mean stripping the gears loudly. Terana was able to get it up far enough for Knight to slip through in puddle form without the gears being destroyed.   On the other side, about 9 feet down, was Hell. Demonic rituals over a river of magma, with cages with headless remains. All appear to have been here for a while. Knight found a winch for the door and let the others in as quietly as he could. The team regrouped and went to investigate the cages.   Partway there, a titanic skeleton rose out of the magma. Instead of a head, it had a mass of whirling gears and machinery. It rasped out something just comprehensible as "More guests... or components." With that, combat immediately began.   While Zaran suppressed the skeleton's life-draining curses, Terana and Kal'vus slashed at the monster's head enough to reveal a glowing red weak point, though they were slapped for their trouble. Knight focused dream power and buried his dream nail in the weak spot. Influenced by dreams, the strike happened to hit a certain blue gear that started to let off dream motes. Then the whirling metal covering the skeleton's real head exploded off like a shrapnel bomb.   As the gears and chunks rattled to rest on the surrounding terrain, the metal skeleton with a flaming red skull rasped "You could have been my greatest invention", then tried to grab Knight and construct a clockwork version of Knight around him as the core of some sort of cyber-golem monstrosity. Everyone was very glad blackblink saved him, even if it meant there was now a hostile robo-Knight to deal with.   Zaran used his fire extinguisher breath filled with metal shavings to do very unpleasant things to the flaming machine skull. Large parts of the skull seemed to fade and go ethereal. Kal'vus followed up with enough strikes that the monster went into a third phase, its head exploding into a whirl of pure fire.   Then everything came to a head. Terana took a moment to withdraw, passing out buffs, then set herself to react the moment the robo-Knight did. Knight, robo-Knight, Terana, and the skeletal demigod all moved in the same fraction of a second.   The robotic shell went for Knight. Terana intercepted it and, despite it having a fully copy of Knight's defensive abilities, parried its attacks and tore it to pieces in moments. The demigod, seeing that Terana, not Knight, was the most dangerous target, reached out with its undodgeable hand and began wrapping Terana in the same sort of Borg cybernetics that Knight had so narrowly avoided. And then as Terana's swords desperately prevented the cybernetics from reaching into Terana's brain, Knight put Terana's buffs to use and hit the evil demigod of industry so hard he turned into a tree.   And then Humphery, summoned by the threat to Terana, shield-slammed a hole through the settling tree.   The party ended up with a gear of a dead god (the blue, dream-mote-emitting gear Knight had struck) and a bunch of unwanted cybernetics (inside Terana). And also a pile of random loot from the rubble. The cybernetics not integrated into Terana's body weren't going to be easy to immediately remove, especially since she was the group's surgeon. There would be ways, though. It's good to know competent people.   A flower grew out of the top of tree, and a crystalline vial grew in middle of that. It turned out to contain Gardenia's Oil. Apparently this is where all the magical power in the demigod went.

Rewards Granted

Character(s) interacted with

Azhar, Ngel Sfet, Auntie Edna, Hoen, Gork the Half-orc, secret agent, evil demigod of industry

Notes

Gork has some fighting experience. He's extremely strong. His style and finesse are completely lacking.   Edna is a lot more skilled than Gork, almost as strong, and calls on totems for power during battle. She's about competitive with Kal'vus.