WttSS session 50: 'So We Split the Party'
General Summary
GM note - these are my aims with my new report style:
Post writing: 1013 words; I'm calling this a win
Rescuing the lost boys
Kerman glided out on his wing suit to Khalil and Masruq, then leading them safely back with his survival skill through the animals and plants.- They avoided everything of danger, including some 'spirit grasses' - plants with the same ethereal quality as the colony creature they'd already encountered
- Away from the protections of the ledge on which the Caliban Crow was landed, they felt the effects of the light of the valley: -1 total MP; this cleared after an hour back in the ship
- They took second sleep on return
Investigations
Murad and Zarzur ran some further investigations whilst the 'lost boys' were recovered, talking to the kharatuk AI and making sensor sweeps.- Portal Builder experiments are run out of the facility under the waterfall
- The kharatuk left this valley through another portal on one of the far walls - they decided it best not to interfere with the technology here and left it in the same stable operation it may have been in for millennia, implying the current state of trouble happened after they left
- The kharatuk were once the Emperor's "playthings"
- The Emperor followed the path of the Beast, whose worship focuses towards body enhancement, not the spiritual connections shown in the valley - nothing here is likely to be of the Emperor's doing
- Murad and Zarzur also took second sleep whilst waiting for the party to re-gather
- The corruption moving through and destroying the towers was still travelling, even with the kharatuk computers in low-power mode
- Speaking to the AI and accessing its databanks for information didn't make the corruption move any faster
- The cascade started by using the computers originally now won't stop
- The presence of Yochanan could be seen in the towers: his use of terminals destroyed them and his path between terminals could be traced by the corruption of other items he passed through
- Yochanan thus showed further ability to travel through the air and not be confined to physical objects as previous sorcerers had been
- Yochanan's interest in, and therefore corruption of, the towers was proportional to their usage:
- Tower 1 on the left was used to monitor Portal Builder experiments and saw the most corruption - it would fall before sunset
- Tower 2 controlled all the hacking equipment and would fail overnight - though it did also report that the other kharatuk tower in the valley had a repository that would allow construction of more hacking devices
- Tower 3 on the right monitored all kharatuk activity and would last well into tomorrow
- The crumbling tower rock falls to ash in the same way as did the stasis chambers
- No presence of Yochanan was detected on the Caliban Crow however, implying the corruption could travel by means other than just through connected surfaces
- The moving sorcerer energy shows on 1 new lens of the spirit glasses
- A section of rock some 200m wide collapsed, causing the falling water to move backwards some 20m or so
- An amount of ash came rising into the air afterwards, its quality and subsequent dissipation similar to the ash of the crumbling tower rock and stasis chamber
Cleaning house
The PCs decided Masruq should clear out the corruption from the towers using his exorcism ability to sweep the remnants of Yochanan's energy before him. During the preparations, Kerman spotted signs of Hounds of Tirides in the towers. The PCs escaped all dangers during the exorcism but the damage to tower 1 was too great and the act of clearing the energy broke the lower half of the tower. However, the corruption was fully cleared from the remaining structures.- Masruq used a blessing on the corridors connecting the towers to slow down the travelling corruption as he worked
- His exorcism worked much as it always has on the corrupted sorcerers: though he could expel the corrupted energy from the tower rock, the rock would explode outward
- Masruq worked surgically round the towers, cleaning them with controlled explosive surges
- The Hounds of Tirides appeared as a white-grey mist and distant howls
- When the mist was nearby the first time, Kerman filled the chamber with repair sealant before the hounds could appear
- When the mists were travelling down corridors towards the party in the towers, Masruq blasted out the walls, and so corners, of the place, preventing the hounds' appearance
- During the process, when the PCs were calling out to ask of each other's safety, where most people heard Kerman's concern, Masruq heard Kerman as he spoke in the portal chamber: "stop messing around and kill that guy!"
- Masruq called upon the Star Singer for his blessings and exorcisms
- During the height of the exorcism, he felt the divine presence of the Traveller and was protected from the detonation of the first tower by the very calmness and will of the Icon, whose presence was stronger than anywhere before
- Kerman also felt this presence from the back of his grav-bike when calling for help avoiding the falling debris of tower 1
- She explained that the Portal Builders were capable of building in both the human and djinn worlds in harmony and therefore the damage the players had done in their world was manifest in her own
- This Portal Builder ability is quite beyond humans', whose creations usually damages the world of the djinn, forcing them to live away from human lands, out in the wildernesses
- Khalil chose to be - politely perhaps - blown off his feet instead resisting the wind, gaining some respect from her in the process through his deference
