Mission 011: All Aboard!
Mission Log
The party were dispatched to the Eregin Quarry outside of Zadash with instruction to kill a strange, massive serpent that had taken residence there, tearing up the land, the digging equipment, and several people. However, upon arriving there, they quickly realized that the 'serpent' was, in fact, nothing of the sort - but rather a large, mechanical vehicle - what some might, were they from a world with such technology, refer to as a train, floating over the ground it was tearing apart as it moved impossibly fast through the air, with ghostly figures clinging to it in desperation.
Using Wild Yarn's sudden excellence in physics to calculate the jump and Rarity's featherfall spell to make it so they didn't fucking die, the group jumped onto one of the segments of the vehicle, where Jace was able to rip open the hatch and allow them inside. Once inside, however, things were quite different - the warm glow of candlelight filled a car full of seated passengers and a friendly conductor - until it was revealed you had no tickets. At that stage, the conductor changed into a vicious, impossibly-long-limbed monster, grabbed everyone but Yarn, and literally hurled you through the train to the back, with the poor souls who couldn't afford a proper seat.
While Yarn followed, she stopped in an infirmary train, speaking with a nurse who introduced herself as Telura. At the same time, the rest of the group was greeted in steerage by a rabblerouser named Calyn, who spoke of how the Second and First class passengers were being fed and given warm rooms, while the rest of them starved in the back. Calyn urged the party to follow him to kidnap The Last Passenger - a VIP whose late arrival had delayed the train, explaining the significance of this as the train was an evacuation, the last such train departing the nation of Cyre as the entire kingdom was destroyed by a disastrous event known as The Mourning. Telura, to Yarn, explained on other thing: that they hadn't made it, that the train had been caught up in the apocalypse, that she was the only one on board who was aware of the fact that every single passenger and crew member aboard was dead.
With the party reunited, they looked toward the back of the train - finding that the passengers could not see that there were cars behind steerage, only reacting with terror and horror at the idea of The Mourning behind them. In the next car they found supplies, grabbing several items of interesting nature, and in the true final car they found a mitrhil cube, chained to the walls, perfectly seamless and smooth - except for a small, oval-shaped indentation. After determining that within the cube seemed to be some kind of antimagic energy (including making Helele's animated fingers... temporarily less so).
With no ability to open this cube, the party moved forward, joining with Calyn on his mission (Which, Telura informed you, he went on every day, getting killed in the process and reviving the next morning with no memory of the failure) and accompanied by Telura. The next car was the infirmary, where soldiers from the war that led to The Mourning, but it seemed the incident transformed them. Their faces were nondescript, vague, almost... default-looking and unremarkable, and their wounds were horrid, not the sort a man could survive - and yet each was breathing and moaning in agony and seeming life. Jace, Rarity, and Calyn grabbed uniforms to disguise themselves and Hel took on the guise of a conductor, and the party moved on quickly, hating the vibes here.
The next car was the Second Class sleeper. Here, Fess found a sending stone, marked with the symbol of the army uniforms some of the party were wearing, from which a voice screamed, over and over, 'IT MUST BE KEPT SECRET!'. Jace managed to bluff some more out of it, pretending to be soldier, but when he said the package was not secure, the voice just began to scream incoherently. Lark, meanwhile searched the rooms - finding a Second Class ticket and sleeping passengers. Or, well, they appeared to be sleeping, but their faces were masks of fretful dreams, eyes wide open and staring blankly up from their beds.
In the next car, the party was once again greeted by the Conductor, but the 'soldiers' claimed they were escorting entertainment up to the First Class, and because Jace's deception game is strong af despite what one might think after MEETING Jace and they had their own 'conductor' escort in Hel... it worked! And the party moved forward.This cabin contained middle class passengers, gossiping - talking about who, perhaps could be the Last Passenger, suggesting a few options: The Queen of Cyre, Dannel ir'Wynarn; the General ar'Tyne whose men were the soldiers on board, the Achmagus Ap’Drantham who was said to be creating Cyre's magical weapons of war, and Baron Orien, owner of the railroad and profiteer of the evacuation. While Fess engaged in the gossip (mostly just instigating by saying 'It was definitely so-and-so' at random), the party made their way forward still, into the dining car - where second class passengers ate mindlessly off empty plates and drank from empty glasses, and where a table of soldiers sat in a daze - seemingly... lost?
Bluffing past the soldiers, the party went into the kitchen - here the chef told them it seemed unlikely Dannel would be the Last Passenger, as she would never put herself above her people, and likely stayed within Cyre to go 'down with the ship' as it were. She's only grateful the crown prince is safe, having been out of Cyre at the time of the disaster.
The next car has a conductor, dragging a messenger who claims he needs to get off the train to deliver a letter - without a ticket, however, he is tossed to steerage, and the letter falls to the ground, which Yarn picks up, finding it says "To the Prince: Package received. Passenger aboard. Bindings in place" when the party reads it in the first class dining car, filled with overflowing plates of old, rotten food.
The next car is the Bar Car, and upon entering the party found it empty but for one man, smiling behind the bar. They also found the doors had vanished, and the very friendly bartender offerred to give them whatever they wanted. While Lark quite ungratefully refused to trade his name for a pina colada, Hel was willing to trade feeling in her hand for a way out. Yarn tried to prevent this by tossing Dandy the Crawling Claw at him, but this failed and Dandy was crushed. At the last second, Jace quickly stepped in, offering instead his war pick, claiming it belonged to his father. While that was a lie, the Bartender still smiled and accepted - taking the weapon and, more importantly, all memories Jace had of his father, before the door opened into the First Class Lounge.
In the lounge, the party met several wealthy, snobby passengers who continued to gossip about the Last Passenger as Yarn and Lark performed a dance, and mentioning the strange new lover of the prince, from some other land, perhaps even one of their enemies... before moving to the next car and finding the Archmagus' apprentice attempting to hide evidence of a device like the cube from the rear of the training on orders of his master - whom he confirmed was no on board.
The next car contained a number of warforged, with a laser grid firing from their eyes acorss the car - which Lark was able to nimbly dodge around, to deactivate them with the help of Yarn's unseen servant Hamlet, to give the party access, at last, to the Engine. There, they found Baron Orien, who had been merged with the elemental that powered the train into a vicious undead lightning monster - a monster which was brutally beaten down because Rune Fighter is broken as fuck...
But once defeated, he popped back up, replaying the scenario from the start, and making the party realize that he was not, in fact, the Last Passenger either. Accosting him before he could transform, Jace managed to intimidate him into giving a locket he'd been handed by the Archmage, told it was a key for the 'package' in the back - a locket, which when opened, contained a picture of the prince and his bridge: Telura.
Showing this to Telura, and making their way back to the cube, it was opened to reveal Telura's corpse, and she remembered the truth of who she was - the wife of Prince Oargev, a princess of another of the kingdoms at war with Cyre, whose marriage they'd hoped could end the war. The General and Archmage had decided it needed to be kept secret until the time was right to reveal the union, had put her in statis, and stalled the train to put her aboard.
As Telura blamed herself for the deaths of everyone on board, it was Yarn who helped her come to peace, and placing the wedding ring from the corpse into the cat's paw, Telura, the train, and all its passengers vanished, leaving the party in the quarry - successful, in one way or another.
SUMMARY
DM Tony
PLAYERS Cairo (Rarity), Katie (Wild Yarn), Mike (Fess), Luke (Jace), Rae (Lark), Zoe (Helelee)
RESULT Mission Complete
TOTAL XP 1666 xp each
TOTAL GP 25 gp each