It's time for some strange metal creatures

General Summary

After the craziness of the attack, we went back and examined the metal dog. There’s all sorts of strange tubes, gears, liquids, and a piece of a glass ball that if it was whole would be about the size of my loose fist. We look through the remains of the dogs, but none of them have the glass ball intact. I wonder if they are maybe what lets the dog work? Either way we are able get a good night’s sleep before setting out for THE STONE RING We get from the head man that Roan de Carville was headed towards the Stone Ring, so we set off to explore. The moors are one large empty field broken up by random large granite blocks or tufts of grass, set off by the occasional hot springs. It was a strange sight. It was also a long and exhausting hike, as we hiked for most of the day before finally catching a glimpse of the Stone Ring. As we walk up we can see it’s been hit by lightning several times, there’s some burn scars across the top of the hill. At the base of the hill, there’s a camp site, and Devan sneaks off to explore the tents. A few minutes later he comes back. “They’re all empty. In the middle of the camp site there’s what I think is a body wrapped in some white sailcloth. It smelled terrible, a weird sickening sweet smell. I suspect there’s zombies somewhere nearby.” We follow Devan back to the camp and it feels like it’s been empty for a couple of weeks. At least we’re getting a bit closer to Roan, but we’re still a few weeks behind him. The camp also feels impersonal, it looks like they took out everything they owned and cared about, but left the bed rolls, like maybe they were going out for the day? As we look around the area, Milli looks up the hill and says, “There’s a blue light up there right about when the lightning hits. I’m gonna go up there.” I follow her up the hill, and slowly the rest of the group falls into place. The area is about 60 feet across, and more or less circular. After a bit of reckoning and looking around I’m able to figure out exactly where the moon would rise on the solstice. As I walk closer to the rocks I notice they look like they’re thrust up out of the ground, not place on top of it. The rocks are all about the same height, but different widths, with roughly four sides each. In the middle of the hill there’s a weathered stone disk with no clear markings. Lightning strikes in front of us, knocking us back, and Mill and I briefly see a staircase going down into the rocks with symbols etched all around the edge of the rocks. “There’s a staircase going into the hill!” Milli yells back at the group. “The lightning seems to be on a timer. I think we’ve got 20 minutes before it strikes again.” “I’m going in!” I yell, walking up holding my hands over my ears to help protect them from the noise of the lightning. “Why bother waitin’?” Cap’n asks, and he calls lightning. The rest of us go down in pairs between his lightning strikes, and finally Cap’n comes down behind us. As I glance at the stairs we are climbing I notice a niche in the wall with a lever in it. There’s a bench with 8 hooks and the remains of coats, but no signs of footprints in the dust. It sounds like lots of metal hitting metal in a regular pattern, and the further we go in, the warmer it gets. After a while we reach a metal door, and Devan touches the door feeling a slight rumble. “Enough of this caution,” Cap’n says, “Let’s go in,” and he touches the door handle and jumps back as he receives a shock and his hair stands on end. “Well that didn’t be goin’ like I expected.” I reach forward and push the door handle down with my quenched torch, and push the door open without touching it. As we look at the door we just went through it looks like there is a new contraption added to the door with a green stone in it. “Stupid green stone,” mutters Cap’n as his hand twitches in memory. We look around the room and wonder just what this is. There’s a series of six cubes about twelve feet around and the entire room hums with energy. On top of the boxes are two metal pieces coming out in a “V” shape and lightning flows between the two pieces. There’s a large cracking sound and suddenly the noises coming from the boxes doubles in volume and there’s a strange blue glow coming from them. At the other end of the room are double doors with a bronze plate on them. I push them open with my torch again. The next room looks like a workroom with four tables and part of various projects on them. There’s a path worn through the dust going between the four doors in the room. One of the tables has what looks like a metal man in pieces on it and the table catty-corner to it has a six-legged metal creature on it in pieces. Neither table do I particularly care to examine too closely. We push the back door open with the torch again and are hit by a wave of heat. Peaking through the door we can see a large roughly circular room with a giant hole in the middle. It looks like there might be stairs going down it. Above the large pit is a room about twenty feet up with ramps going down to the floor on either side of the strange room. A figure paces back and forth in the room. Devan stepped through the door to enter the room and giant metal men move ready to attack, so he quickly backs up. “Guys, guys, I don’t think we should go in there. Those guys just tried to kill me, but I moved too fast, so they couldn’t do it.” Devan whispers. “I think it’s a bad idea to go in.” “I could shapeshift into a mouse and sneak my way through the room.” I volunteer. Then starts a lengthy discussion on what is the most advantageous animal to shapeshift into. Finally I just say, “I’m gonna go in as a cat, sneak around, and come back here. I’ll let you know what I see.”

I sneak in, and it really is hot in there. As I go into the room I realize the heat is coming from the giant pit in the middle of the room. It’s glowing red hot and the clanging sound is coming from it. As I walk through the doors I glance over at the metal men. They don’t even move. Apparently a cat doesn’t rate their attention. Thank the Creator for small favors. Over on the right hand side about halfway there’s a small stage made of wood with a 3.5 foot column in the right corner that is covered in colored stones. I’m tempted to jump up on the column, but I’m not sure what will happen, instead I go to investigate the platfrom up in the air. I sneak carefully up the ramp, and at the top discover a low wall going around the platform with a swinging door barring the way inside. I push the door open gently with my head, and glide in. Thankfully the swarthy man inside doesn’t seem to notice me. He is too busy drawing a project to even notice me. I glance up at the metal tables. These people have enough metal in this place to arm all of the Alorian army, and maybe the Rholdan army as well. Either way there’s all of these thin pieces of metal that look rather like thin ropes. I sneak back down the ramp, and do a quick roam around the room, but don’t see anything too obviously interesting. I head back and relay all I’ve seen. While I was busy exploring the platform, they checked out the two side rooms. the one on the left had pieces of armor and all sorts of other things in it, and the room on the right had large automatons ready to be deployed. There is no sign of Roan de Carville or the group we thought we’d followed the into this strange chamber.

Report Date

21 Dec 2021