WttSS session 41: 'City of Brass'

General Summary

In the aftermath of the fight with the Legion in the middle of the Deep Desert, the Xinghur of the Great Caravan gave thanks to the Star Singer that casualties had been so few. Only one sand buggy and its occupants had been lost to the Legion attack. The hungry desert had taken a transport crawler full of kit and supplies but mercifully, the party had been able to rescue all the people from it before the sands dragged it down.   Masruq prayed for the souls of the Legionaries claimed by the sand that Kerman had angered with a spirit ray. Legion though they were, it was a horrible way to go and not clear if their spirits would get to move on or whether they also be trapped in the sand for eternity.   In the rest of the journey time thereafter, one further person was lost to the call of the sands one evening. Masruq was called upon to exorcise one of the spirit tornados that seemed to be the cause of the lure, a service he kept up for the remainder of the journey. In total this lasted five Coriolis Cycles, shortened from six by Zarzur's drone network, at the end of which the Great Caravan was delivered to the mountains that contain the City of Brass.  

Between sessions - decisions made in flashback

  The party was split between taking the Legion combat exos and the unknown cube. Masruq made the deciding vote in the end for the cube.   Searching his archaeological database afterwards he found reference to an artefact that might be the cube. An unnamed techno-archaeologist had once gone searching Portal Builder locations in search of what he'd surmised was their access to limitless energy. He built the cube after having become convinced he'd found the answer but could never prove it to anyone. In a fit of pique, or perhaps despair, he is said to have stridden out into the Ghodar desert to draw energy from the very sands and was never seen again.   The party collectively agreed not to poke and prod the within the Deep Desert and Khalil left the investigations until they reached the City of Brass. His passive scans revealed that the device was in some sort of lockdown.   During the remaining journey time:

• Masruq studied the anthropology of his hosts (he can gain suitable bonuses to any future roll about the Xinghur society)
• Khalil spoke with the tribes about their drone and technology - they weren't prepared to risk any constructions in the Deep Desert but were happy to discuss theory (he can gain suitable bonuses to any future roll about the Xinghur technology)
• Khalil also supervised Kerman and Murad fixing up the hole in the cargo bay caused by the Legionaries - the ship is now weather-tight but will still need quick stop at a dock to be space-worthy

  The party also became concerned by Professor Nasralleh's orchestration of affairs, particularly with what he might have placed in Zarzur's head all those years before, so Khalil and company performed an examination of her in-built cyberwear. They could have worked through three levels of complexity, being ever-more invasive with each level. In the middle of the Deep Desert Zarzur was only comfortable with the surface-level investigation:

• Her headpiece is not standard cyberwear but would rather count as Consortium Faction tech - technically licensed even
• There were no obvious extra parts to it however, so if there are hidden protocols it'd require investigation to the deeper levels to find
• The tech had a remarkable similarity to the Abouelkassem spirit research facility's hidden location that specifically avoided patterns of civilisation: no human patterns, no 9-fold symmetry of the Icons, just seemingly-random distributions that would appear like the wilderness and not attract religious focus - an attempt to create a science with no religious foundation and arguably both dangerous and heretical with it

 

Don't look here

  When the Caravan was in the area the Xinghur expected to find the City of Brass, the party gathered onto the bridge of their ship. For a while, they waited, or seemed to wait: Murad began to notice an oddity in the others' behaviour where they seemed to pause now and again, forgetting what they were doing for a moment before remembering and then getting back to it. This occurred a few times, though not with any dangerous consequences, so Murad just kept a watchful eye.   Then a mountain range appeared in front of the caravan. Only a hundred metres away, they should have seen it well before now but instead it simply appeared in view. The combination of sudden vertigo and effects of Portal Builder energy fields swept through the Great Caravan and crew of the Caliban Crow alike. The caravan itself split into three: Some drivers and pilots were able to retain control of their minds and kept going but others turned to the left and right, some in panicked reaction but others through another strange distraction.   On the bridge of the Caliban Crow, Masruq and Khalil faced the same problem, their minds wandering to other topics: They somehow just forgot that the mountain range was there and went back to dealing with other things. Fortunately, Kerman and Zarzur resisted the effects, as Caliban still could not detect the mountains.   Below them the Great Caravan only turned to more chaos but Kerman decided that proof of the mountain's existence would solve everything and flew the Caliban Crew on. Coming to twenty metres, then Caliban apologised as his sensors now also detected the great rock ahead. Trusting to his pilot skill, Kerman went for the landing and it went normally, the mountains were there.   The range had a perfectly carved ramp, leading from the desert floor up into its heights, a ramp some hundred metres wide and perfectly capable of supporting both the Caliban Crow and the Great Caravan. With the proof of its existence established the party were able to use this to herd the Xinghur vehicles back together to the safety of the mountains.   Whilst some of the crawlers were getting off the sands onto the ramp, the desert played its last card, sending tendrils of sand up to try and pull at their wheels. The City used its defences to repel this however, and the feeling of 'The Deckhand gives you strength' filled the air. Though this was mixed with the feeling of 'The Faceless One looks upon you', everyone in the Great Caravan felt the Icons with them, pushing back the sand.  

Pleasure and pain

  Like the Nekatra Mountains, the range rose from the desert floor without foothills. Unlike the Nekatra Mountains, the rock of the Deep Desert range was gold-grey in colour and sported a perfectly-carved ramp of natural rock leading from the mountain floor up to wind between the mountain peaks. Either side of the ramp the sheer mountain walls stretched up into the cloud cover, totally impassable.   As if to accompany the seeming return of the Icons, the mountain range also clearly supported life again. Where the Deep Desert was completely barren, the mountain range was full of life, even if limited by the terrain: moss and alpines grew on the mountain walls, supporting insects who in turn would make good food for some lizards and who, again in turn, allowed some birds to thrive.   Of more interest to the physicists of the group, the cloud cover seemed to be a source of the planet's chain lighting, which seemed to spread out from the clouds of the mountain peaks and beyond into the desert atmosphere. From there it would appear to come in and out of view, gradually fading at it travelled, until it vanished into the skies, though implying a continued movement on into the Ghodar atmosphere.   The party decided to investigate first, before leading the Great Caravan up. Murad, Masruq and Khalil rode up the slope on grav-bikes. After an hour they came to a choice of ways, followed soon after by many more. Sending a drone down one path they discovered that something about the place managed to convince the drone it was heading the wrong way and it performed a 180-degree turn to get itself back on track, though recording in its database that it was always travelling forward. When it returned to the party it reported a circular route, not registering that it had been turned around.   The scout party continued on but though they wanted to keep to the main path, they were forced at one point to make a left or right choice. Investigating the left path, they found that Masruq and Khalil were overcome with a burden on their mind, that they got distracted and started to forget where they were headed. Involuntarily, they 'remembered' their way again, but turned back around, as the drone had been. Unaffected, Murad was able to right them but needed constantly to do so to keep the others headed down the stressful path.   Trying the other choice, Murad was again unaffected but Masruq and Khalil this time felt better for the path chosen. In fact, they found themselves feeling better from the point they turned away from the stressful, left choice.   Back at the camp, the different emotions played out there too. Watching on drone cameras, both Kerman and Zarzur were affected by similar feelings of burden and relief just watching the choice of ways, though much less intently. The Xinghur tribes though, were heavily affected by a general forgetfulness, losing track of the idea that they were waiting for a scouting party at all. The entire caravan started to make camp as if to stay here, on the edge of both the desert and the mountains and Kerman had to spend considerable time continuously going round them all to keep them focused.   During this time, the Yazdan marmosets managed to escape the Caliban Crow and tore up the ramp. Zarzur managed to corral them with a drone. The marmosets seemed to have the opposite problem to humans in the passageways: they would actively, excitedly and without harm take the path the humans found stressful.   Further investigations revealed that if you constantly chose a path of good feelings when given a choice you would end up in a pleasant little opening in the mountainside in which you might stay and even survive. Though not quite as pleasant as an oasis there were some plants and lizards to survive upon and protection from the sun. This place felt restful and calm. Its only oddity was an old, abandoned food supply cartridge of clearly Third Horizon technology though weathered by some few years. Perhaps stranger still, it had become embedded into the rock of the place, as if somehow merged by very-unfriendly physics.   As the party considered how they would approach this maze they heard in the distance a clap of thunder, Khalil just looking up at the right moment to see a discharge of the planet's chain lightning but here down into the mountains itself perhaps six to eight hours away by the pathways, located in between the directions the party had been investigating. Carried on the wind, they also heard the sounds of a winged craft go down and the unpleasant dispersion of energy that would accompany a ruptured graviton generator.