The Burning Sands of Trinity

Across white sands ancient skyfire lingers...

General Summary

• Party begins battle with Vril scout party.
• Vaxos attacks mounted on Vril Hound.
• Marsala's fire charm protects Jayne from Firedancer attack.
• Rob tries to finish off a fallen Firedancer.
• Party searches holding pen and recovers a survivor named "Adnar."
• Party follows Vaxos's tracks and evades an ambush.
• Jayne takes Vaxos by surprise and the party flanks the rest of the Vril war party.
• Vril Pyromancers manifest flares to reveal the party's exact position.
• Zen manifests Prophetic Song and Jayne incapacitates Vaxos.
• Jayne spares Vaxos's life and the party interrogates him.
• Party witnesses psychic impression of the Trinity test detonation reflected in the Memory Mirror.
• Party is attacked by Thought Eaters unleashed by Kalima's Trinity Skyfire Ritual.
• Party discovers the corpse of a Thought Eater victim.
• Party meets Kalima and negotiates the exchange of Vaxos for the pump station key.
• Party unlocks the pump station and reactivates Renewal Station 5.
• Math, Jayne, and Edmund take turns in the station's recovery pod and heal their radiation-induced genetic degeneration.
• Jayne is sedated for cranial surgery and experiences a disturbing dream.

Session Detail

"We have the advantage."

Spotted by a scout, the party started fanning out in search of cover and firing arrows under the dark jungle canopy. Within moments Vril reinforcements emerged from the bush and engaged them in a fierce skirmish. In spite of the dim conditions of moonlight, the party's ranks of seasoned wilderness explorers and fighters found themselves at ease fighting at range and maintained distance from the foe while sustaining a close formation. Even Jayne, eager to engage the enemy in melee with a hasty charge, soon rethought his tactics and decided it best to avoid becoming encircled. He instead held ranks with his compatriots and made effective attacks with his bow from a central position. William and Everest followed close behind and loosed killing blows of their own. To overcome the less than ideal visibility, Marsala summoned forth a spiritual weapon to traverse the distance to the enemy line and directly engage the enemy without the interposing obstacles of darkness and jungle cover. His spectral morning star, acting by the direction of an unseen hand, began to whirl about in mid air and strike against the line of Vril skirmishers.

"They keep on coming..."

In spite of their superior marksmanship, the adventurers began to realize they were outnumbered and perhaps at risk of becoming overwhelmed. When Vril Firedancers emerged wielding damaging flames of kinetic power, the weirdness of the scene further shook their resolve; however, the timely intervention of Zen, with his own wild psionic powers, incapacitated the enemy flank with a blanketing wave of hypnagogic fatigue and bolstered his allies' flagging morale. The party's disciplined formation was briefly threatened by a charging Vril Hound, a mutated canine creature as large as a horse bearing an armoured rider, but Math's decision to wield his guisarme prevented the mounted warrior from attempting a charge against the party's right flank and forced the rider to adopt Parthian mounted archery tactics.

"Pan shot!"

The mounted archer tried to ride past the party's formation and strike Math with enfilade fire, but the towering cook's armour held true, deflecting all attacks. This maneuver provided an effective screening diversion for a Firedancer taking cover behind a nearby wattle and daub shack. As the rider withdrew, the pyromancer darted out from behind the shack and unleashed a stream of searing flames at Jayne. The slayer, warded by a heat-resistant charm courtesy of Marsala's entreaties to otherworldly spirits of fire, shrugged off the attack and the Vril began a whooping chant, yelling "Firewalker!" and expressing distinct dread at this unforeseen capability.

"You hurt him and woke him up."

One lightly armoured pyromancer dashed through the jungle brush and attempted to engage the party's left flank. Zen extinguished the attacker's smoldering flames with another somnifacient manifestation of psychic energy, which left Rob free to attempt a lethal sneak attack with his dagger; however, the Firedancer, infused with preternatural resolve, survived what should have been a killing blow and immediately rose to take vengeance on the hapless rogue. Rob scrambled to escape the warrior's fiery clutches while Edmund loaded his pistol and unleashed some fire of his own and finished off the Firedancer with a single shot in the back. As the weapon's discharge echoed through the forest the rest of the surviving Vril skirmishers began to turn and retreat further into the bush.

"I put them on. How do I feel?"

The party looted the fallen Vril and took account of their recovered spoils, including a pair of metallic Firedancer bracers, which emanated an aura of psychokinetic energy. Their slain enemies also carried a variety of potions and oils, which the party hustled into their travel cart while they planned their next move. They also investigated the nearby mud hut and behind it found a pit 10 feet deep and topped with makeshift wooden bars lashed together with thick tree vines. The pit was full of human bones and other foul detritus. Inside the hut the party saw more bones and piles of straw, and in one of these piles they discovered a Pachucese survivor. The survivor, a bronze-skinned blue eyed young male named "Adnar," explained that he had survived the final cull of prisoners by climbing out of the pit and hiding while the last of the captives were being rounded up to be taken north into the white sand desert. He described the cruel tactics of the Vril and verified that another party of Merikan travelers had been taken to the desert shrine days earlier.

"I'm pretty good at tracking, right?"

Jayne and the party's other scouts examined prints left in the muddy soil and followed the Vril rider's retreating tracks on the jungle path to another set of human tracks. The pair of tracks, human and hound, converged and proceeded further north until pausing and diverging. While the party pursued these tracks further north they noticed the surrounding trees and vines were growing progressively more withered and blighted with every step. Wilted leaves hung in curled grey bunches and stagnant pools of fetid water gathered between sagging tree trunks. For the first time since the party had entered the jungles of Pachuco and Outramar, the ubiquitous sound of buzzing insects now ceased. No cry of bird or beast was to be heard. A nauseating scent of decay hung in the soundless air and all the forest lay perfectly still save for an odious rippling breeze and the groaning sway of dead and dying trees. Observing the tracks, the party discerned that the unmounted scout had continued on the well-worn path while the mount's tracks diverted into the brush. Sensing a deceptive ploy, the party brought up their rear wagon and set Marsala and Everest to guard it with Adelle Mirodar. The rest of the party proceeded to follow the hound tracks to a hidden trail arcing around the main path.

"We'll ambush their ambush."

Not far along the trail the party gained sight of the hound and rider. Jayne crept closer and caught the warrior flatfooted with a surprise arrow strike. In response the fighter launched into a horrible blood warping rage and called out to his allies with a ululating cry in the enigmatic Vril tongue. Rob, choosing to unleash his rarely used botanokinetic powers, attempted to snare the hound in an entangling biomass of vines and branches, but the mounted warrior successfully navigated his mount through the obstructing field of animated flora. He then lowered a lance bearing the black sun pennant of Vrelland and charged at Jayne as the rest of the party rained arrows into the jungle hollow. Jayne narrowly evaded the charge and his allies scrambled to close distance and overwhelm the rider in a melee brawl. The rest of the Vril war party, dug in for an ambush prepared on the main jungle path, were not in a good position to respond to the party's surprise attack, which left the hound rider to vie alone against the party for a brief time during which his mount was slain beneath him and he was forced to defend himself on foot.

"They didn't miss. They're looking for you."

As Vril pyromancers manifested illuminating flares around the the party, their scouts began firing arrows into the now brightly lit hollow. Taking wounds from enemy arrows as well as from the grounded fighter's war hammer, Jayne remained undeterred and examined his opponent's fighting style in search of a weakness to exploit. Meanwhile, Firedancers sprinted through the jungle and began engaging the party with hand-to-hand strikes infused with pyrokinetic energy. Engaging with one of these attackers, William took a direct blast of fire energy and surprisingly suffered no hurt. He then channeled the energy of the blast into his dagger and unleashed a pyrokinetic attack of his own which wounded the Firedancer and astonished onlookers.

"All I have to do is concentrate..."

Rob and Zen used their psionic gifts to delay/incapacitate the Vril with entanglement and sleep while the party continued to struggle against powerful melee combatants. Zen then began to intone a haunting melody which rendered mental clarity and increased combat awareness for his companions. Inspired by sudden insight, Jayne finally saw his moment to strike and used his longsword to trap his opponent's war hammer while deftly thrusting his own dagger under the foe's free shield arm. This stabbing blow nearly punctured the warrior's lung and left him sprawled unconsciousness in shallow breath. Invigorated by the battle's fortunate turn, the rest of the party rallied and began to gain the upper hand. Rob and William flanked to subdue one Firedancer while Edmund and Math faced the other. Math used his prodigious reach to ward away enemy blows and defend his allies and eventually felled the pyromancer with a mighty head splitting blow. The front line of the war party now crushed, Rob used his psionic talents to entangle the remaining scouts and pyromancers until the party could finish them off and claim victory.

"I stab that one, but I'll heal this one."

Math and Jayne started finishing off the surviving foes, but Jayne stopped midway through and decided to spare the Vril cavalryman. After stanching his bleeding and securing the prisoner, the party revived him and learned he was a Vrelland "cave chieftain" named "Vaxos." Vaxos spoke English in a hissing manner through teeth filed to razor points. He boasted that after his people had finally conquered the Forbidden Zone and claimed the power of Eldorado they would turn to the east and conquer Merika as well. He went on to declare that he was "bonded" to the priestess Kalima, the leader of Trinity's Vril garrison. The party began to wonder if Vaxos may have value in a prisoner exchange.

"So you did say it's just happening in the mirror, yeah?"

Everest and Marsala rejoined the party to help organize whatever loot could be recovered from the vanquished Vril war party. Marsala called on his spirit allies to rejuvenate the party and restore their resolve to continue the fight. Exploring the edge of the jungle clearing, the party realized they were now at the edge of a cliff overlooking a vast desert of pearly white sand. Miles in the distance they saw three small columns of flame rising from the otherwise blank wasteland. Three small flares appeared high in the sky above the columns. As the flares slowly descended in the breeze, Jayne alerted the party to a barely audible countdown echoing across the dunes. Straining to listen, the other party members began to hear the numbers, "'30,' '29,' '28.'" As the countdown descended, Marsala noticed something glowing in his travel pack. He reached inside and produced Pacui's platinum Memory Mirror, which was now pulsing with a faint blue glow. The houngan directed the mirror towards the desert. As the countdown reached "zero," the mirror's silent reflection revealed a horrifying scene of destructive violence, an explosion so great that it sent a column of smoke, dust, and fire miles into the air forming an expanding mushroom cloud of intensely focused conflagration. Zen asked William for the incorruptible eyeballs and faced them at the reflected image. They began to drip with thick, dark blood.

The party continued to watch the silent explosion rise and expand and were astonished to see small gaps or rifts being torn in the air within and around the swirling cloud of fire. They saw tiny silhouetted forms begin to emerge through these blank rifts. The creatures, for that is what they were, skittered on four spindly legs as they clawed and ripped and tore through the manifold of reality and scrambled into this world from the void beyond (who can say where?). While these alien multitudes scattered and buffeted across the explosion's expanding waves of billowing concussive force, the rifts through which they had emerged resealed without a trace. Minutes after the initial revelation of the Exploding Image, the mirror proceeded to display a series of momentary impressions of the overall scene, including the fiery blast, the opening of the rifts, and, at the instant of detonation, a bulbous form resembling an aberrant creature not of this world. It bore a hollowed physical appearance resembling nothing more than the morbid visage of a not-quite-human skull.

"I forgot dad."

Disturbed by the horror of the scene, a scene of Precursor destruction only half-remembered in the myth-science of lore keepers and scholars, the party looked to Vaxos and saw tears of joy and adoration streaming down the Vril warrior's scarified grey cheeks. Trussing their captive in a makeshift harness, the party arranged their descent from the cliffs and began moving across the viewless white sands of Trinity desert in search of Kalima and the pump station key she possessed. Marsala, Everest, and William stayed behind to guard the other prisoners and keep watch on the baggage train.

The rest of party spent what was left of the long night in a three mile journey to the Trinity shrine. Feeling the Blood Sickness taking its toll with every passing moment, Math, Edmund, and Jayne were eager to face the Vril priestess and challenge their ill-omened destiny. Dawn was finally about to break over the desert horizon as their forced march ended within sight of the burning pillars. An unseen force, alerted to the party's presence, suddenly shrouded the pillars in a dome of shadow-black void energy.

In that moment small rift portals, like the ones seen in the Memory Mirror's vision of the Trinity detonation, began to open revealing void creatures, "Thought Eaters," who lashed out with stupifying telepathic energy blasts and fed upon memory and intellect with grasping tendrils of ice-cold ectoplasm. The creatures, resembling floating skeletal quadripeds encased in "skins" of translucent ectoplasmic membrane, attacked en masse using pack tactics. Whenever these creatures inflicted psychic damage, the party members could feel their thoughts being sifted for memories. The thought eaters then hungrily extracted these memories leaving their victims in a state of temporary selective amnesia. Jayne, long-believed to be already suffering from some from of amnesia, was apparently immune to the creatures' telepathic attacks.

Zen tried to induce psychic slumber in the creatures but found them immune to this tactic. Rather, once the thought eaters identified him as a source of psionic power, they swarmed him and used their tendril attacks to extract and feed upon his last remaining power points. Fortunately, the creatures were vulnerable to physical attacks and the party managed to fend them off and recover their stolen memories from the creatures' broken carcasses, which housed pilfered thoughts in the form of ephemeral glowing crystals that dissipated and released their psychic contents when touched.

"Do you have the lamp oil?"

Nearby the site of this battle, the party found the remains of a villager sacrificed to the Thought Eaters. The corpse of the young woman was covered in crawling insects and her lifeless skin rippled with the slithering motion of unseen horrors. The party realized this had to be the origin of the Creeping Death sickness they had witnessed at Farport and at the homesteader farmhouse. The Thought Eaters would drain their victims of memory and intellect and replace these things with a symbiotic alien presence that usurped human life and merely imitated human behaviour. Before the rest of the party could ask, Zen had already assumed the unhappy task of burning the victim's corrupted remains and exterminating the Thought Eaters' parasitic symbiotes.

"My people? My people banished me. I have no people."

At this point the black dome receded revealing the burning pillars of the Trinity Shrine and a small band of Vril Firedancers and priestly attendants. Standing before the flames upon a raised sandstone dais the priestess Kalima held her arms wide in a welcoming gesture. She was clad in black leather vestments and her face was shrouded with a black strap. In spite of this obvious visual impediment she cast her sightless gaze attentively and without hesitation. Her manner was uncommonly gregarious and she made no effort to menace the party. She declared satisfaction in having successfully unleashed the Trinity fire and expressed her desire to have Vaxos, whom she referred to as her "mate," returned to her.

So Edmund and Jayne made the offer: the party would release Vaxos in exchange for the station key. Kalima indicated willingness to negotiate but first Edmund briefly paused the discussion to ask Zen if he could accept such a bargain with the Vril. After confusing the tabled proposition as an offer to surrender himself to Kalima, Zen explained that as an exiled Firewalker he was no longer a son of Pachuco and that he had no stake in the war with Vrelland. Edmund assured him that he wasn't proposing the party join the Vril only that they would call a truce and make the exchange.

Upon concluding the pact, Edmund learned that Kalima's Merikan captives had been spared Trinity's sacrificial flames. They were shown mercy only after agreeing to join the Vril search for Eldorado. To this end, Kalima had sent them with a war party to the Rift Delta beyond Silver Lake to investigate a recently discovered temple bearing Precursor markings. Contemplating a life in service to the Vril's dark gods, Edmund wondered if his brother now confronted a fate worse than death but said nothing of this to Kalima or his own comrades.

"It looks like the big dipper. Or the little dipper."

Kalima laughed as a she handed over the station key. It appeared to be nothing more than a metallic spoon and she wondered aloud if poor Brother Ottmer had deceived her. She didn't care. In her opinion, now that the Trinity skyfire had been unleashed, the pump station was inconsequential. She turned to lead Vaxos and her party into the desert and expressed doubt about whether the pump station was even still operational.

With the departure of Kalima's band, the burning pillars suddenly extinguished and the party proceeded to explore the Trinity shrine. They found a monument with a metal plaque commemorating a date in Precursor English: July 16^th1945, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Puzzled about the inscription's language and date, the party nonetheless learned the origin of the terrible images they had witnessed in the Memory Mirror.

Back at the pump station the party resumed their exploration of the cauldron ruins. After climbing on top of the brass dome, Math realized that it had a flat peak. He set the key/spoon upon it and the handle end spun to face north. The party inspected the indicated direction and made closer examination of a ruined wall located roughly along the key handle's projected magnetic line. The partially collapsed wall was inscribed with stone carvings of a star chart which included the constellations of the northern celestial hemisphere, including Draco, Cepheus, and Ursa Minor. Further inspection of the ruins revealed that the encircling walls were carved with a complete precession of the equinoxes depicting a panorama of the heavens.

Math made a more thorough search of the dome and realized it rotated freely in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. The party combined their efforts to loosen the moving parts and in the process discovered that the dome spun in two sections divided at the midway haunch of the arch: the base and the top. Once loosened the dome began to hum and vibrate with internal energy as if some dormant mechanism had been reactivated. While experimenting with the spinning sections, the party realized these two sections bore small, barely perceptible engraved markings. The base section bore the letters "MN," and the top section bore the letter "P."

Recalling the labelled statues and star chart recovered from the hidden prayer chamber, Edmund realized that "P" must be a reference to "Polaris," the star located at the tip of Ursa Minor's handle. Zen suggested that "MN" must refer to "magnetic north." The party aligned the base of the dome to position the "MN" label plumb with the imaginary line indicated by the key's magnetic handle pointer. In order to align the top section they decided to wait for nightfall to reveal the "heavenly lights" referred to in Brother Ottmer's cryptic instructions.

Under clear night skies, the party faced a conundrum. Should they turn the top of the dome to face Polaris or turn it to face Errai (also known as Gamma Cephai) the current pole star most closely approximating celestial north in the year 1000 PCE? They chose Errai, the shepherd, and after a brief wait the pump station began to respond. First the hum within the station intensified and a web-like haze of visible light energy began to glisten in the air above Cauldron Lake. All of the metal objects, crowbars, shovels, pickaxes, including the party's own metal armour and gear, momentarily began to float weightless and then gently drop down again. Math himself, clad entirely in metal, was lifted bodily into the air four feet before falling downwards. As the newly realigned station drew increasing levels of energy from Earth's magnetic field, the hazy emanation of light eventually coalesced into a translucent energy dome extending 50 feet above the pump station. Afterwards a persistent column of light extended down from the dome and struck the top of the station sending a light shockwave across the lake knocking everyone prone. As they rose to their feet they saw purified water beginning to fall once more from the Water Wall cliffs above Trinity's Cauldron Lake. Finally, a hidden door opened in the south west side of the pump station. The door slid down into the floor revealing a widening gap illuminated by a bright white light.

"Welcome to Renewal Station 5."

Matthaeus wasted no time before entering the chamber. As his eyes adjusted to the artificial lights within, he heard a disembodied female voice speaking in Precursor English. It welcomed him to "Renewal Station 5" and announced that the station was commencing a decontamination scan. Vertical and horizontal beams of light began tracing across his body and as his vision finally acclimatized to the brightness of the chamber he saw a gleaming metallic pod begin to decompress and open in a cloud of hissing steam. The voice identified Math's condition as degenerative genetic damage caused by acute radiation exposure. The automaton advised reconstructive DNA resequencing therapy and beckoned Math to enter the recovery pod for treatment.

In only a few minutes Math emerged from the pod feeling fully rejuvenated. Jayne and Edmund followed soon thereafter. Whereas Edmund had an identical experience to that of Math, Jayne received additional medical counsel from the station automaton. Firstly it identified the presence of subdermal bionic augmentations which appeared to be performance enhancing implants. When the automaton asked Jayne if he wanted to reactivate his implants he eagerly assented. Secondly, the automaton informed Jayne that his brain showed signs of surgical intervention indicating a procedure to modify portions of the hippocampus. According to the automaton's analysis, this surgical tampering would have significantly damaged Jayne's ability to access long term memories. The automaton asked Jayne if he wanted the recovery pod to attempt to reverse the surgery. Jayne responded in the affirmative. The machine explained that Jayne would have to be sedated in order to undergo the necessary cranial surgery and administered him a sleep-inducing agent that quickly rendered the slayer unconscious.

Dream Interlude: Jayne's Nightmare

While under sedation, Jayne began to dream a familiar dream. He saw a valley nestled within an isolated wilderness, and in the valley a sturdy log cabin. It was the same recurring dream scene he had experienced since first approaching the Forbidden Zone. As before, he saw a blond-haired girl running with ribbons among the meadow flowers. Her path traced a rainbow across the hillside. When she saw Jayne in the distance she paused and called out to him, "Jayne! Come down! I'll tell mom you're back!" Jayne trotted down the steep valley incline until he reached the gentler slopes where the girl took him by the hand and led him back to the house. As they approached the door to the log cabin, Jayne's nose caught wind of scents that felt familiar but were nonetheless unrecognizable. The girl smirked at him and said, "Do you remember why I call you 'Jayne'? Because your other name makes no sense! Why spell your name with a 'J' if it doesn't sound like 'Juh'? I like 'Jayne' better. 'J' is for JAYNE!"

Noticing Jayne's confusion, the girl turned to him at the cabin's threshold and asked, "How do you say your other name again?" Jayne could only stammer, "I- I don't know-" The girl rolled her eyes and frowned as she pushed the door open and called to a woman standing in front of a kitchen water basin, "Mom! Jayne is teasing me again!" Seeing only the woman's back, Jayne noticed her long flaxen hair which hung loose over her shoulders and swayed across her back. He felt another sensation of comforting familiarity. When the girl faced Jayne again, however, he was startled to see her face utterly blank, devoid of expression or feature, "Jayne? Are you ok?" He was not. Beginning to panic, he turned to the woman who was facing him now with a similarly featureless visage. Her mouthless voice implored him in plaintive tones, "Jayne? What's wrong? Where have you been?"

Jayne awoke in the recovery pod of Renewal Station 5 feeling cured of the blood sickness but nonetheless plagued by a heretofore unknown malady. The station automaton informed him that the memory recovery procedure had failed.

The Forbidden City of the Phoenix: Chapter V - Part 2

February 4^th-5^th, 1000 PCE

Player Characters

William Benjamin
Rob
Marsala
Edmond Andrew
Zen
Matthaeus “Math” Mannheim
Everest Bell
Jayne

Campaign Info

Setting:

Previous Adventure:

Next Adventure:

Other Adventures:

Missions Completed

• Bargained with a Vril leader named Kalima and exchanged a captive Vril chieftain for the pump station key
• Discovered the possible whereabouts of Edmund's brother (Silver Lake/Rift Delta)
• Used the key to solve the pump station lock and reactivate the control chamber
• Accessed Renewal Station 5's recovery pod to cure Math, Jayne, and Edmund's Blood Sickness condition

Notable Treasure

• 9 white potions of cure light wounds (1d8+3) (alchemical, made in Pachuco)
• Green potion flask (labelled "Armour" in Pachucese)
• Palm-sized quartz crystal (emanating a faint psychometabolism aura)
• 2 glass vials of oil (labelled with Vril markings, emanating faint psychokinesis and clairsentience auras)
• 3 smokesticks
• 2 onyx amulets (emanating moderate metacreativity aura)
• 6 sets of masterwork leather bracers (emanating faint psychokinesis aura)
• Masterwork war hammer
• Masterwork lance
• Masterwork composite longbow (+4 damage bonus, draw weight 180 lbs./18 strength required)
• Masterwork chain shirt (emanating moderate psychokinesis aura)
• 245 silver coins (stamped with the Vril Black Sun insignia)

Character Rewards

• Experience points were awarded after this session.
• Total accumulated XP earned since previous awards: 7980.
• Characters that did not participate in every challenge will receive less than this accumulated total which accounts for all campaign encounters/challengers faced since Encounter at Farport.
• Jayne and William both unlocked mysterious character abilities that will be further explored in future sessions.

Characters interacted with

Adelle Mirodar
Adnar
Vaxos
Kalima

Report Date

01 Jan 2019

Primary Location

Trinity

Secondary Location

Trinity Pump Station