WttSS session 51: 'A Dark Beneath the Stars'

General Summary

GM note: reduced to 1043 words - nice!  

Kharatuk towers

  In the calm after the cleansing of the kharatuk towers, the party sits down to investigate and secure the towers and the information held therein.

• Each of the towers are dedicated in decoration and form to the Dancer to such a degree that each would qualify as a chapel to Her/Him, despite also being a place of operations
• Though the towers still hold some power in their stone reserves, the party considers using their desert cube as a backup - Khalil sets to investigating it in the second tower labs
• The cube can store massive amounts of energy and currently holds as much as 10 times what the towers hold at present
• Masruq's damaged hand could be healed through rapid regeneration at the kharatuk housing facility
• The kharatuk people left this valley by a second portal that lies 60km round the left wall
• At the time of leaving, the valley was stable and uncorrupted
• Scans of the valley show further corruption that traces Yochanan's history of movement:
• He has spent the majority of time at the waterfall - the control station of the valley experiment - and the kharatuk transport and fabrication tower in the valley below
• He has been often to the palace
• He barely visited the housing area
• He has yet to breach the sphere in the sky
• The party asks to download the AI databases for future reference but the AI will only agree to this if Murad promises to safeguard the data from the First and Second Horizons - he agrees

  ...We also agreed to cover other questions in downtime between sessions, so I'll add an addendum where needed later.   The party is keeping a routine scan on the activity of any Portal Builder spheres and the valley's two portals.

• Spheres came to seemingly fix the obelisks that rest either side of the portal as soon as the cleansing of the nearby kharatuk towers was complete
• The party did not interfere, though Khalil took recordings of the event
• Scans of the fixing couldn't reveal what was happening, as, much like the physics of the auroras, the work was being carried out at a lower atomic level than humans can yet perceive

 

Lands of the djinn

  Jihan spent a long time trying to chastise the rest of the party as she had Zarzur and Khalil but struggled to get near them. When they worked out what was causing her trouble it caused a religious debate in the party and a problem for future good relations with the djinn in the valley.

• Jihan was unable to get near Masruq or Kerman, who were both still under the influence of the Traveller's calm come over them during the cleansing
• She claimed that the Icon aura was killing her people much as the destruction of the kharatuk towers had done
• Masruq choose to relinquish his calm, remembering his full human self through poetry
• The party could not persuade Kerman to give his up however, as he took the stance that if the djinn were harmed by the holy presence of an Icon then perhaps he shouldn't give it up, as how good could djinn really be therefore?
• Masruq was confident enough the state could be re-established if given up
• Kerman used his talent to ask the Traveller if it would be best for him to give up his calm or not
• The Traveller said that it would be 'best for Kerman' to keep it - and so he did
• Jihan left the ship in a storm and hoped her duty to the party could be cleared quickly
• She warned that though she might not be able to harm them, her fellows were under no such restriction
• Later, red-yellow djanna began to appear across the ship
• Zarzur scanned the valley to find that djanna of many colours seemed to naturally occur throughout
• The party asked the kharatuk AI what it knew of the djinn here - it had no full answers but said that the portals seemed to be able to alter the state of things entering valley, whose state was also somewhat altered
• Somehow this place was shifted closer to the world of the djinn

 

Yochanan's favourite places

  Kerman and Murad take an evening grav-bike ride out into the forest valley to explore, choosing to head towards the transportation and fabrication tower. Travelling at high speeds, they avoid any danger in the forest. Deciding to be cautious, they investigate the perimeter of the ruined tower but turn back before the valley gets too misty, too Dark and before anything nasty detects their presence.

• The mists gather with the sun having set behind the peaks
• They pass many animals and plants:
• 'Spirit' grasses that reach up for them as they pass
• A plankton-like species that hangs in the air and sticks to them slightly as they fly through the cloud
• Rabbit-like creatures that flee from them at the same speed as their bikes
• Dromedon feeding calmly
• 'Spirit' jellyfish
• The roar of a distant but familiar-sounding predator
• On approach to the tower they observe a human shaped shadow and slow for a look, though moving on before attracting its attention
• Its shape is that of a swarm of shadows, parting itself to move through the forest without disturbing the foliage
• Overall the swarm retains a human shape for an unknowable purpose
• Kerman remembers a story about a similar creature that attacks mountain climbers to feed on those that fall
• Nearby the tower they observe its ruined state and partial fall into Darkness
• The upper floors are broken open to the air and house birds
• Breaks in the walls and floors show the ash-colouration of Yochanan's corruption
• Spirit glasses show Murad - careful to keep this from Kerman - the presence of further shadow swarms and possible sarcofagoi
• The lower area has a block of mercurium surged up from the ground in a large blob
• Spouts of mercurium break the ground here too but one takes the image of the upper half of Yochanan himself, as recognisable by Masruq's retained memories from the Abouelkassem volunteer Tzipora