WttSS 44: 'And There Came 9 Black Tablets'
General Summary
Zarzur had dreamed of a mind that could not see what was happening in the mountains, one that could not conceive of what might be causing the wild surges of power and energy there, but the Xinghur knew: Using Khalil's lightning cannon, Kerman aimed multiple destructive strikes at the Legion assault craft, casting Legionaries and hull to the winds.
Zarzur's dreams of destroyed places also came true: Channelling the lightning also tore apart the rocks of the peaks themselves in an overload of the mountains' environmental systems, causing landslides to rain down on the Great Caravan and tailing Legionaries alike. Crawlers, buggies and grav-shuttles all scrambled to avoid the falling rock and splintering shale but fortunately, Kerman was able to protect some with the hull of the Caliban Crow.
The energy of the system escaped in another form: As the field of forgetfulness and distraction collapsed under the pressure of the lightning discharges, the party mystics were hit by its resonance. This dazed Masruq, brought Khalil to his knees and knocked Zarzur unconscious. As this all happened, Murad witnessed elements of the archway leading to the Portal Builder city spinning up on that same energy to find its own resonance. Air within the arch refracted the light beyond, as if seen through a diamond, before the energy released itself in a pop of air and a rush of pink spilling out from the edge of the archway to meet in its centre, now hanging like a translucent curtain.
Recovery
During her time unconscious, Zarzur's dreams are once again taken over by thoughts from elsewhere. She sees a huge metal sphere hanging in the air, falling, not-falling, with a purple energy crackling across its surface, chasing or perhaps following a fleeting shadow. Below, a shaft of black cuts the air as a shock of void, turning, not-turning, reaching for the energy above it. In common with previous dreams, she feels helpless, unable to do anything about anything she sees. As the party mystics start to come round, Murad is left to consider the spinning arches before him. Though they have reached a resonant state, use of some spirit glasses shows that energy is still being drawn into the archway system, pushing it towards further instability. Moving back to the archway, Murad tries to place his hands on the black collar surrounding where the arches meet the floor, trying to connect with any kharatuk AI that might be held within the stone that he once communed with as an obelisk in the Crossroads. He senses that there is an AI in there but, unlike the rock of the Crossroads, there is no proper interface for him to use to speak to it. By this time Khalil had regained enough presence of mind to come over and help. Listening, he realises that there is a sound emanating from the pink curtain drawn across the archway, a sound reminiscent of the song of the Crossroads that had such an effect on mystics. Considering the way the kharatuk rock has been jammed into and around the archway he considers that the Crossroads technology was the result of a careful, planned approach and that the technology interference here on the archway is much more of hurried affair, a system hack. Such also explains why there is no official access terminal to be used. Drawing his uncursed flute, Khalil ponders whether he can affect the resonance of the archway mechanisms through the emanating sound. His considerations are interrupted by a surge in the spinning motions that briefly throws the archways out of resonance. Before they settle again into a higher frequency, the separate archway pieces rattle against each other and disturb rocks from the wall above, which rains down toward Khalil but Murad is ready and pulls him back to safety. Deciding time is running out, Khalil and Murad combine their efforts. Khalil determines a rhythm that will hopefully feed back into the system in a positive way and plays for Murad to copy, who taps it out onto the collar stone. Though it is limited, this does give Murad a connection to the collar's AI. The AI has little time or capability for a conversation and simply communicates into Murad's mind: "energy to cause explosion; where?" Murad chooses the Legion. The kharatuk hack on the archway system complies and sends all its gathered energies back through the mountains and into the Legion ships still recovering from Kerman's lightning attack. The engines of all remaining Legion craft begin to vibrate with the energy of the mountains. As more landslides trigger with the passing energy, the Legion engines rupture, tearing apart ship walls and ejecting rogue gravitons. More Legionaries die.Reunited
Kerman and Zarzur want to urge the Great Caravan on, to put some distance between it and any Legion reprisal. Fortunately, no-one was harmed in the landslides, though a few sand buggies were damaged and some of the larger crawlers need digging out. The buggies could be left behind but the Xinghur are loathe to abandon their transport crawlers, so work begins to dig away at the fallen rock. Zarzur gathers her remaining drones to spy on the Legion, to see if they plan a counterattack. She sees the chaos of their group, many of the Company Legionaries having succumbed to the damage of one or other attack. The Fleet Legionaries though, in their exos, remain a capable force, despite the loss of their vehicles - their scouts retain their gliders too. Despite being capable of an attack however, the Fleet Legionaries remain in place, licking their wounds. Their commander yells into her personal comms, clearly furious and Zarzur hacks the comms to listen in.GM note: Zarzur spent the last of her 5 successes here, earned against Legion comms a crazy number of sessions ago The commander - Lujayn Abashid, Commander of the Harir 5th, is speaking to Professor Nasralleh and Zarzur learns the following:
- Commander Abashid demands permission to attack the Great Caravan
- She has lost much of her force in PC attacks and they have also captured one of her men
- She cannot believe that Nasralleh's plan benefits from her Wing standing by - she is incredulous that they have to take hit after hit from the PCs without being allowed to respond
- Nasralleh forbids any counterattack by the 5th - the plan is still on track and far too important
- He tells the commander to stop her complaining, as it might cause him to regret aligning himself to the Legion instead of the Colonial Agency
- Though Commander Abashid appears close to the end of her tether, she relents for now and orders her Wing to withdraw, following the original plan still
- It is clear that any tiny further aggression against her force will get a response from her however - the PCs have a button they can push
GM note: roll tech at the time of use to see if it works - I forgot to do this with the lightning cannon; must remember this time Masruq also occupies himself during the trip, examining the script carved into the archways. His library database shows that no-one has ever encountered anything like this before. Neither have the party, as the script on the Crossroads was a corrupted version of it and nothing the Crossroads AI showed Murad of the 'void creature' or the 'flower people' shows any similarity. Masruq thus tries the djinn Jihan. Before seeing the script she is completely confident she will be able to read any writing shown to her but when Masruq presents a holo-vid of the archway she pauses and finally admits she's never seen anything like it before. No djinn remains low for any real amount of time however, and she declares that she will be able to translate the script in time. She will of course share this knowledge with Masruq if he is prepared to use his last remaining favour on it, freeing her afterwards. He declares that he needs time to consider how best to proceed but Jihan is in fact happy with this, as she was rather hoping the party was going to take her through the portal up ahead. For some time, the party had debated whether the archway system was in fact a planet-bound portal but when Khalil saw the pink curtain drawn across it making the same sounds as the Crossroads, he worked out (Gambler talent) that it was instead a hastily constructed barrier to prevent the passage of mystics. Nonetheless, Jihan's teasing words indicate that there is indeed a planet-bound portal up ahead, still to be discovered. Masruq agrees to let Jihan study the Portal Builder script whilst he decides what to do about it. Upon reaching the area of mountains near the hexagonal chamber, the Great Caravan sets up in a nearby safe location without going into the hexagon. They now have a safe, defensive position that the party can use as a base.
