Session 17 - The Command Post - Zellandria's Notes

General Summary

Ohhh shiiiit yeah DND.
A group is already underground exploring something called the Command Post?
They snuck past patrols of giant clockwork constructs, elementals and gargoyles and somehow managed to make it into a side room.
The simple clockwork watchmen and knights did spot them as they were being stealthy but the party fought them off.
Huge, rumbling footsteps thud into the room.
Oh no.
They hide.
Voroc thinks he’s great at stealth.
NATURAL ONE.
Voroc is not great at stealth.
Voroc’s sarcasm is lost in translation.
No one can see where the golem is but oh boy they can hear it.
Thuds echo through the halls..
Howlizter, the motherfucking zoid, sits and gears whir and click..
Voroc: It’s fine.. It’s just… a big golem.. Robot.. Surely it won't hear much..
A booming monotone voice speaking ancient giant rings out: The elemental infestation cannot continue. The lockdown will proceed until the infestation is dealt with.
Voroc: It’s ok guys I don’t think he knows we’re here..
Steps get louder towards the party.
Light sweeps over the entrance to the area where the party hides.
It passes its light over the bodies of the constructs.
Giant Golem: This is unacceptable. Repairs will be made. The infestation will be removed.
Thudding forward.
Cornelius peers around the corner.
He ducks back in immediately.
Light sweeps past where his head was a moment before.
Diiroehn hears a faint clinking sound as he’s hiding in the room beyond the rest of the party.
Like stone on stone..
A fist sized rock just rolls along the ground of its own accord?
Oh boy.
There’s some spooky shit down here.
The rock rolls past him.
He quietly reaches out and goes to scoop it up but the rock begins to roll faster/
He swipes at it and grabs the rock which feels warm to the touch.
A single, roughly carved eye opens in the middle of the rock and blinks at Diiroehn twice.
THE ROCKS HAVE EYES.
Welp. This is how we die.
Diiroehn covers the eye on the rock with his hand.
Another rock rolls past him, into the room and around the place.
The big ol’ construct thuds closer to the main group.
Dii throws the eye-rock as far as he can down the hallway.
Dexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcheccccccccccccccck!
23!
The rock soars across the hallway and crashes into a sconce on the other side of the room.
It rolls towards the entrance.
Big ol construct turns immediately towards the sound and charges towards it.
Construct: The infestation will be purged.
This whole city must be purged.
Ket creepers out to have a look
A huge smashing sound rings through the hallway as the construct goes to smash the tiny eye-rock foe.
What a mighty protector.
It's been a pretty nice morning for Zellandria d’Orien.
She’d head over to the Glass Anchor for a light lunch but the service seemed pretty slow today.
Zell: What the hell, I’ve been here like 20 minutes and no one has taken my drink order?
Skarn Er.. I don’t work here. The manager is downstairs. If you want to see her you’ll have to go down to the Command Post.
Zell: Is that like, a night club or something?
Skarn: I do not know what that means.
Zell: alright whatever I’ll go speak to her myself.
There’s two signs - one marked by Gideon stated “haunted as fuck, don’t go here”
I mean.. I could definitely go there. Zell isn’t afraid of anything.
The second is more obviously travelled and the second sign says “magic death rocks” also signed by Gideon.
I mean I guess I need to go that way to reach Ket so I can make a formal complaint about her staff.
A 15ft tall giant sized golem with a furnace in its chest comes sprinting out into the plaza area.
It’s spotlight scans the area and then locks onto something on the ground.
A pile of rocks?
The golem slams its giant fist into the ground into the pile of rocks.
The rocks rear up and roll away.
I guess those are magic rocks. Gideon is so smart.
The golem chases after it.
Zell thinks to herself that this isn’t a terrible location for a nightclub but man it was a bit of a walk.
Looking up at the ceiling, there's a huge mural of the face of a fire giant, hair wreathed in flame.
Weird, I probably would have named this place “The Bunker” or something edgy.
Small fires burn on the floor in the main hallway in front of Zell.
Diiroehn waits behind the entrance to the area, listening to the sound of footsteps waits silently.
Zell walks blindly into the room grumbling about the journey.
Diiroehn’s jaw just drops and he lowers his sword.
Diiroehn: What on earth are you doing here?
Zell: Oh. Hi. I came to meet the manager of the Glass Anchor. Their service was terrible today and I wanted to make a formal complaint.
Diiroehn: Can you hurry up? Maybe not alert all the golems and watchers in here?
Zell: First of all, rude. Second of all, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Ket pops out and gestures to Zell to scoot over there.
Zell: Oh good, Ket’s here.
Zell moves at a normal pace looking around.
Voroc grabs Zell by her arm and tries to pull her forward.
Zell: Please don’t touch me. I don’t like being touched by poor people. Also do you ever clean those gauntlets? Gross.
Voroc: Of course I do!
Ket keeps watch over the entrance to see if ol mate giant construct comes back.
Diiroehn scoops a bunch of tablets and shards off the main table into a bag held out by Voroc.
One of the intact tablets has a list of names, mostly seeming giant names? Other words like Archon and Leaguemaster?
Another tablet in giant reads: “Transition to a post war operation”
Zell can’t read any of this but she’s catalogued it mentally and decided that it’s all property of House Orien.
Dii: It’s mostly a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense.
Ilalai: I can carry some of this if you need assistance.
One of the last letters seems to start mid sentence ”we of course thank you for the long and beneficial partnership.. We request humbly that if you are going to use the island for your experimentation that you build as far away as possible..”
Ket: How about we look towards the north and check out the rest of the room.
A wide staircase leads down. There’s a landing above the stairs with a large closed door..
Looking over to the right there’s another exit that golem apparently didn’t come out of.
Zell: So what do you think this place was? Like a shopping mall? I wonder if I could get a burger or something down here?
Moving into the next room the air tastes more dusty and stale.
The next room is huge, sized for giants, I guess.
A huge cracked table sits in the centre of the room 5-6ft off the ground and chairs with rotten pillows coated with dust
A huge block of masonry from the ceiling looks like it’s fallen down and crushed the table.
Rusted large sconces line the walls and huge statues stand at the back of the hallway.
This seems to be the only way in and out of this room.
Voroc looks around and notices that one of the walls seems to have non-active runic circles beyond the glass, maybe intended to be artificial windows providing light?
Why not just live on the surface… weirdos..
Cornelius takes out some kind of rock density testing device because of course he’s carrying one and has a look at the statues at the back of the room.
A few lines of text are visible on a plaque below the statues.
There are 4 statues, two pairs, the centre two reach out and are clasping hands.
Cornelius ungracefully climbs up on the plinth to take a look behind the statues
Two of the giant statues seem to be standing under the mark of the Sulat league, the other two are standing under an unfamiliar coat of arms.
The central one standing under the Sulat mark seems to be an almost life size fire giant with sculpted flames glimmering with rubies. There’s a huge sculpted hammer with an egg sized ruby in the pommel.
Zell, across the room without knowing what he’s looking at, calls dibs.
The other figure beside the fire giant is a female Stone Giant and seems to have a bandolier full of glass vials set into stone. A shimmering silver powder seems to be sitting in the base of each of the vials.
The firegiant is shaking hands with a female storm giant with a spear in her hand and a large maul beside her. Behind her figure a cloud giant with a blade at his belt?
The plaques read: “In memoriam of those lose” “In celebration of the Quorai’s banishment” “In thanks of the Sulat league, creators of the sleeping sun and the skybreaker”
Cornelius lets them know that he’s found something of value
Zell: DIBS.
Dii: Perhaps we should not remove potential valuables just yet in case it alerts the patrol..
Cornelius and Voroc detect magic and things.
Voroc: I think I have a skeleton of one of the Quorai in the future.
The fire giant is “Adaxus, first of the Sulat league, first of the flame”
The stone giant: “Lindara Understone, The Lifegiver. Adaxus’ first apprentice and member of the Sulat League”
The text around the coat of arms “the free city of Scora Bael”
Strategos some name Zaph didn’t catch because there was a bunch of lore dropped and she was trying to get details.
High Archon Cleos
Yo when did they start to all go crazy from being around each other?
----------------
Cornelius finishes casting detect magic. There’s a strong trace of Evocation and Abjuration magic coming from the giant ruby.
Zell stands guard chatting incessantly to Ilalai and Ket about why they’d call this place The Command Post and not like something better and if they thought this was like a food court or something.
Voroc saves Ilalai and calls her over to look at the spell which seems to be a Glyph of Warding.
Diiroehn, Ket and Ilalai go to have a look at the broken table which seems to be carved with patterns and glyphs.
A map?
Figures seem to be marked with different names and positions “first legion” “drow ranks”
Interesting.
Towards the end of the table, broken and cracked seem to have two large holding pens.
A large glyph for “loss” is written on the container that is overflowing with figurines.
These nerds were playing tabletop games.
NERDS.
There’s a second container also marked with “loss” which remains empty.
Maybe one of them was just really bad at chess?
There’s a draw under the table full of more tokens.
We look at the table map some more.
Voroc with a
NATURAL 20.
The full continent of Xen’dric seems to be mapped out on the table. The island where we’re on is crushed under the fallen rock.
Rip.
Voroc notices another draw full of tablets with losses recorded. All seem to have occurred within 3 days.
Well damn.
No indicator of what they were fighting or what was in combat with.
Zell knows that prior to giants on Xen’dric there were dragons before they went off to their island and then before that there were demons.
Dope.
OK GUYS BEAR WITH ME HERE.
Ok so what if inside every giant is a quorai and then like one day all the quorai inside the giants like exploded out and their brains broke and they all went crazy and died.
Pack it up you guys, Zaphy “Is she playing Zellandria or is she just Zaphy?” Cosplay has figured it out . I’m fucking smart ok, I just solved this whole goddamn campaign.
Cornelius ignores Zaph/Zellandria and begins prying out rubies.
Everyone gets 80g worth of rubies.
So anyway inside the vials is a bunch of residium made from dragonshards.
Maybe 200g worth for universal crafting.
So like is someone going to go dispel that glyph of warding under the ruby?
Crickets sound.
Screw you all.
I bet Deborah Cadabara could have dispeled it.
Zell glares as no one dispels the ruby.
Zell: Ow fuck. What the hell?
Voroc: What?
Zell: Magic death rocks, I assume, what the heck.
Ilalai looks and notices the rock as it rolls away.
Ilalai casts message towards the rock.
Ilalai: Why the haste?
Persuasion check.
19.
-1
18!
The rock pauses and turns and faces towards Ilalai, it blinks once and then rolls away slowly.
Ilalai: If you see.. Large.. Construct.. Please.. Warn us…
The rock pauses again and kind of nods once before rolling away.
Weird.
Voroc: I guess you live up to your name?
Ilalai: What? .. Oh.. Oh!
She looks quietly proud/weirded out by this.
Cornelius: I thought this was pretty much just what you did?
We leave the war room and head back towards the main hallway and for some reason decide to go where the giant construct came out of.
Another wide hallway that splits into three identical paths off it which lead almost off like stables.
No movement or figures inside..
Is this where the golems sleep?
Do they need to sleep?
I wonder if Howlitzer could talk to the golems?
Can Howlitzer talk?
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT THE ANSWERS TO THESE THRILLING QUESTIONS.
Ket continues down the hallway and passes maybe 40-50 empty alcoves that look like construct nests. A stone slab of a door seems to be broken open where a huge construct is sitting inside.
Upon closer inspection their power shards have been torn out and gone.
Looks like the mighty Xorn kingdom came through and monched.
THEY MONCH.
Those silly Xorn.
Cool anyway let’s go up those giant ass giant doors in the main room. I’m itching to find out what’s behind them.
We go back to the main
Or like go down the staircase
Let’s go down the staircase.
Huge iron walls face outwards seeming to defend against those from coming in?
Why is this so weirdly defended underground? Like you need to bother coming down here first to get to this.
Maybe it was just a design aesthetic.
Weird.
So anyway there’s an enormous barred stone door and Zaph is having a hard time visualising things now because there’s so many questionable architectural features going on
Are they barred on our side? Like a big old horizontal wooden bar? Metal vertical bars?
I’m really struggling right now you guys, tell me what the fuck is happening with these doors.
The centre of the door has a carving of an 8 pointed star on it?
Ket gasps.
Huge tarnished bronze pistons seem to hold the door closed?
I hate these doors.
Glyphs read “Lockdown has been triggered. Elemental infestation.”
So I guess whatever is going on down there we’re not going through.
Onwards to the upper entrance?
This door does not have a thousand different locks on it so that’s pretty nice.
Voroc and Howlizter push the upstairs entrance open.
A round podium is in the middle of the room.
To the left and right of the room the walls are covered in stone slabs covered in softly glowing runes.
In one corner of the room, almost cordoned off, a large number of interlocking gold engraved magic circles are there.
They seem to be similar to the ones in the light tower outside?
Light tower?
Zellandria does not know.
Ilalai: Do we need shards to activate this?
Diiroehn: I have glass with me..
The circles seem to be more for extracting and moving power?
So let’s go in and see if we die.
Cornelius uses a wand of secrets?
What the fuck is that?
Secret magic shit I guess.
Deborah Cadabara would have told me what it does.
The wand shudders in his hand and points at the corner.
A trapdoor?
Oh shit let’s open that bitch up.
A ladder clatters down.
Finally, a ladder, something I understand.
Too much magic shit down here.
Everyone clatters up until Voroc realises that Howlizter will need help.
Ilalai offers assistance trying to push the giant robot dog up the trapdoor.
A bunch of stones roll on in and wiggle in Ilalai’s direction.
Spies!
Ilalai shakes her head in response and then tells them to be careful
That sounds like a threat.
The trapdoor seems to lead to the roof of the command post?
But we’re still underground.
In a big cavern.
How fucking big is this cavern?
Yikes.
Ket uses her snake eyes to see.
She spies a lot of little lights.
A large rolled up rusted chain ladder is nearby.
We could COULD use the ladder.. Or just base jump it like badasses.
Looking into the plaza there seems to be something not quite right about the ground.
We hear wing beats.
A shape dives under the portcullis into the command post area.
The pavement seem to be almost moving..
Rocks.
Lots of rocks.
They roll.
THEY ROLL, BABY, THEY ROLL.
The lights are still fairly far off - maybe 5-10 minutes and closing in on us?
Ket: So potentially we might be fucked or potentially we have more allies. Potentially.
Voroc: I stg if I have to get Howlitzer off this roof..
Dii: Can you see any constructs outside the gates?
Ket: I can only see their flames, I can’t tell if they’re the big guys or not.
A voice rings out.
Calcite: Hellllllllllooooooooooooo. Where are youuuu? The cobbles said you were hereeeeeee.
Voroc: Hey! We’re up here! We come to you, just wait.
So what’s the plan here fam?
Calcite: Are ye coming?
Ket: What if we close that portucolius into the main plaza?
Calcite: You up there?
Ket: Hang on, be patient!
We make our way back down through the trapdoor.
The command room underneath now seems to have maybe 30-40 little piles of rocks watching the room.
Calcite: Heyyyy the boss is on his way!
Ilalai: Are the rocks your friends?
Calcite: Yeahhh we call them the cobbles. You here to help?
Voroc: With what?
Calcite: Ending the lockdown!
Ilalai: Oh yes! There was a room full of controls above.
Diiroehn looks around the room and with a
NATURAL 20
Finds some glyphs marked “Security and defence”
He takes out his piece of dragon glass and heads towards the giant gold rings that indicate the powersource for the room.
He gives it some juice.
Outside a quick loud set of footsteps can be heard coming towards us.
Neato burrito.
Let’s hustle.
Diirohen drops his glass and it almost gets pulled out of his hands into the golden rings. The slabs around the room glow brilliantly one after another.
Looking through the overlook huge crystalline floodlights blink on and illuminate the entire area.
Voroc slams his hand down onto the tablet for the portcolus to activate it.
A grinding noise outside indicates the portucolius
Light leaks out of the glass from Diirohen and it seems to be quickly turning into dust.
8-9 interlocking circles have appeared near the security panel and Dii sprints over to them.
He touches the top right corner that reads “lockdown”. It spins and the ground shakes for about a second and a half before all the lights go out and the room is out of power.
Maybe we got the downstairs door open a little?
Ket: Let’s see what we just opened up.
Dii: I appreciate your quick thinking, Voroc, but I would have liked to see if there was a way to disable the sentries.
Calcite: That’s what we’re here for!
Voroc: I do have more glass if needed.
Dii: Excellent.
Calcite: The cobbles said you’d taken out some sentries.
Ket and Zell are near the doorway and suddenly the light flooding through is cut off.
Zell: Er, excuse me?
They turn.
A wall of stone blocks them
Rock: Are you a friend?
Ket: Er.. Yes.. Are you?
Rock: My name is Maal. I carve the rocks.
Is that spelled with one a or an r?
Marl?
Ma’al?
Marll?
MARRRLLLL?
Marl: What you have done has opened the smallest fissure in the door.
Ket: Front door or sun door?
Maarl: It needs this glass?
Voroc: Yes, lots by the sounds of it.
M’arl: We wanted to sneak in, the cobbles said you had a way..
Ket: How good are you at climbing?
Mrll looks at his little stubby legs.
Er..
Marl: I am not fast.
We’ll try something else little buddy.
He gets worried noises.
Voroc takes his piece of shard out to the powersource and goes to power it up.
There’s not enough power from the remainder of the glass to open the door further.
Anxiety rock is stressed that we haven’t left yet.
Apparently we’ve only opened the door a few cm.
Yikes.
Ilalai leans down to pick up a Cobble to help get up the ladder.
Ket: We have to go up and out now.
Marl worries: I did not know we needed the crystals.
Zell: Do you have a lot of them nearby?
Marl: Not near. We must go.
Zell and Ket try and help the big old sad stressed
A ghostly image blooms and appears.
A projection from somewhere else.
A giant head?
A face. Rotten in places. Ghostly translucent blue with hair floating around outside.. Weightless.. Or underwater?
The image looks around the room.
Ghost projection: What’s going on up there? Are the Quorai attacking?
Well this is ruddy mysterious.
Diiroehn: The Quorai have been dispatched, release the door!
Ghost: Dispatched? I knew they would lay siege! I told them! We will not fall! The door will not release!
Persuasion check.
NATURAL ONE.
Oh no.
INSPIRATION.
Cmon nat 20.
NATURAL 20.
Ghost: Command centre! Open the gates!
Silence..
Ghost: I said.. Command centre! Open. the.. Gates..
Dii: Er.. we’re in here there’s no power.
Ghost: we have power! Power to last a thousand years.
I mean I guess it’s been longer than a thousand years buddy.
Ghost: The deliveries should be coming weekly from the foundry..
Dii: It doesn’t matter
Ghost: I don’t know who trained you, slave, get the order from the foundry or get some from the
Dii: You are completely useless.
Ghost: The tomb of the sleeping sun will not fall to the Quorai today.
The ghost looks indignant.
The image flickers out.
Poor stressed Marl is pacing in the tunnel waiting to go up.
A swarm of cobbles creates some kind of moving tower to help raise him up.
Marl: I think we are out! There are streets! We can escape!
Ket: We just need to get down. There’s a ladder.
Marl: I hope that was not our only chance.
Voroc: This is ok, Marl, these robots are very stupid.
Marl: Oh yes and they say rocks are dumb.
We awkward laugh.
Marl feels better.
He points off in a direction
Marrl: you seem much nicer than the people who were here before you. You fight the con-structs? You come and go. We stay over there. Giants used to have houses?
Ket: Oh hey thanks
Voroc: It’s cool that we’re friends.
The direction Marl pointed was towards the “stone home”
Maarl: You may visit us.. Oh.. We need to leave..
Voroc: How are you with heights?
Marrl: I am fine. Come talk another day. For now we run.
His charges on his stumpy little legs and jumps off the roof and slams into the ground.
A flood of cobbles charge off the roof after Marl.
Calcite: Told you that the boss would like you!
Ket: I told you we were friends.
Calcite: Anyway we don’t care about the door, we care about the constructs being shut down so we can eat them.
He peaces out.
Ket: wait wait wait wait wait wait! Can you take this large metal dog down off the roof?
Calcite swoops and picks up Howlizter and drops him on the ground.
Ok we should probably peace out as well.
Dropping the ladder off the edge of the building we stealthily head off the rooftop and avoid most of the constructs that were rushing towards the command centre.
Time to get the fuck out of here. This is a lame place to set up a night club.
Ilalai looks in her pack and finds the littlest Cobble is still hanging out with her.
CUTE.
Anyway lets get the fuck out of here and if someone could get Zell a drink that’d be great.

Report Date

23 Oct 2019