WttSS session 59: 'The Valley Experiment'

Session report - Whispers to the Star Singer campaign

Written by Doctor Weather

General Summary

Entering the cavern

The party cautiously enters the cavern that serves as operational control for the Portal Builder valley experiment. Here they see something of the Portal Builder's lost culture and find a great mirror at the cavern that controls all, which proves a great lure for Khalil.

• Some hundreds of metres long and a hundred or so wide, the cavern is also lit by a blue-silver twilight and filled with the sound of small cascades of water
• Columns with bridgeways criss-cross the chamber, allowing access to 40 or so of the two-dimensional mirrors that hover at various points around the walls and passage over mist-filled fissures that run like rivers breaking the floor
• Some of the bridgeways seem half-finished, as if partly grown of the hexagonal prisms but left incomplete
• The party traversed the cavern to a dimly-lit back wall to reveal a great mirror atop a dais
• As everywhere, all the bridges and ledges of the place are marked with Portal Builder script
• The righthand wall of the cavern is dedicated to a large statue of a 6-limbed humanoid with a doglike head that is different but reminiscent of both nekatra and the rock monsters
• Columns and bridgeways are drawn back from this wall to allow it to be viewed
• Many smaller statues along the wall and floor support this main figure
• The figures have the form of an animal but the thoughtful look of an intelligent creature - though somewhat sacrilegious for the Horizon's civilised society the PCs theorise that it shows the Portal Builder's reverence for anything that can think

As the party approach the dais, various enemies move into place. They don't interfere with the PCs plans at this time though, allowing Murad to reactivate the mirror and Khalil to touch it, his spirit going therein.

• Red-yellow djanna shepherd other-coloured djanna out of the chamber
• Shadows move in the twilight
• Yochanan turns away from a direct route to the waterfall and begins a search, finally speeding towards a glinting point in the forest below
• Murad activates the mirror through an emotional connection similar to the one he felt at the waterfall entrance - when near the mirror he activates curiosity (of the Messenger) and the dormant, grey mirror goes from a dull shape to a reflective mirror like its smaller cousins

JUMP TO CONTENTS

Mirror space

Khalil's spirit enters the mirror, his body caught a laid down by Murad, and learns to navigate mirror-space. Zarzur supports him by entering the digital space of the Portal Builder AI's using her headpiece, and communicates with the AI in an attempt to co-ordinate and explain his activities.

• Khalil enters a partly mist-filled nothingness that attains a reality only as he gives it one - with excellent rolling he suffers no system shock to his mind
• He learns that he can move to other places in mirror-space and moves to one adjacent to Yochanan as the spirit appears in the physical chamber
• Yochanan space is one surrounded by faces in the mist that scream in pain
• Zarzur speaks to the AI in the chamber to learn that they cannot sense Yochanan, even though they can feel the damage he is doing
• As Khalil tries to help the party by identifying the current location of Yochanan to the system AI, his use of emotions in the system causes the AI there to respond
• To Zarzur the AI describe Khalil's emotional inputs as dangerous, like a virus in the system: he has to try a few emotions to work out what works and what doesn't, as Murad also does to try and help Khalil find his way
• These emotions impact on the valley beyond and so the AI activate a series of rock monsters to kill Khalil's body and remove the spirit
• Masruq notices the off behaviour of the Portal Builder AI, whose other systems are completely pacifist - evidence of Yochanan's corruption to their programming

JUMP TO CONTENTS

Battle with Yochanan

Yochanan entered the chamber in the middle of the mirror space investigations by transporting between a mirror in the forest and one of the ones in the waterfall chamber. He began smashing the mirrors in the chamber before the party - Zarzur in particular - got his attention by helping Khalil identify Yochanan to the Portal Builder AI so they might send in their repair spheres against him. As Yochanan and the rock monsters attacked the party, the shadows also made their move; they were the same demon creature shadow swarms as Kerman saw in the forest.

• Kerman used the Orb of Ghodar's option 2 on Yochanan - to little effect
• It suggested back to him that maybe option 3 would have been better
• I only charged 2 DP for the failed attack, rather than the normal 4 for a 'hate' command
• Murad sliced a shadow beast to pieces with an alpha strike from his kharatuk blades
• Murad also attacked Yochanan, doing 1 damage with each of 2 hits through damage reduction but scoring a 62 critical, reducing Yochanan's movement
• The djanna fled from Yochanan

JUMP TO CONTENTS

35th day of the Deckhand
Campaign: Contract: Whispers to the Star Singer
Characters: PC group: Whispers to the Star Singer
Timeline: Campaign timeline: Whispers to the Star Singer

Campaign

Whispers to the Star Singer (concluded)

Protagonists

Report Date

16 Dec 2022

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Contents

• General Summary
• Entering the cavern
• Mirror space
• Battle with Yochanan