Session 9, 14, 17 - The Grand Staircase - Ket's Journal

General Summary

On a small side table in The Glass Anchor, there is an odd collection of items; a burning stick of incense, a silver arrowhead the size of a humans palm with a swirling relief design, a thumbnail sized piece of a dragonshard and a small book. The book features sketches of people and locations, lists and frantically jotted notes, and more indepth journal entries. The most recent entry reads as follows: [Session 1] Today, we are to decend into the complex below The Glass Anchor. I shall take notes when I have time. Our party today is as follows: Diiroehn Khasad, Voroc De'nar with Howlitzer, Ilalai Stonespeaker, Cornelius d'Canith with Soupbot, Skarn Morphic and myself.

The room seemed undisturbed since we last decended

-Directed Vorok to the dog-like construct

The large doors need crystals to activate in the same manner as the door under the giant statue. Luckily, we were able to decend through a hole instead.

We followed a large set of stairs heading down, sized for giants in the middle and elves on the side.

We encountered two gargoyle-like creatures, who spoke at length with Skarn and Ilalai in what I think was primordial. They mentioned their boss and that they were told not to fight the constructs, though both seem eager to take them on. Their names are Calcite and Gypsom and they seem fond of Skarn.

The two of them knew the zorn we killed at the giant statue. This caused some awkwardness.

A brief fight ensued, though the gargoyles quickly realised that we were more powerful than they expected. Diiroehn threatened them and advised them not to tell their boss of our presence.

Paved streets, multiple buildings, smells like sea water.

-Found bones, another giant skeleton, likely stone or fire. One of the ribs appears to be recently gnawed on.

We found a note from the first settlers: "Nothing this way. The stairs are in bad shape. There's just a clockwork up top."

-Found an ampitheatre with two hollow armours and a signpost. 'Monument (the way we came), Central Command, Manors and Facilities, Elven Housing, Tower of Alchemy -The hollow armour activated as we got close, saying "These paths are closed to slaves. There is an elemental imbalance. Until restored these paths are closed to slaves. You will be escorted to housing." We decided to follow the path of least resistance and head toward the housing, with the armour following behind. -Found another note on the way with different handwriting: "HAUNTED AS FUCK."

The buildings were much smaller, but also far more collapsed and damaged.

On our way, we encountered a sink hole full of spider webs, the home of several phase spiders who caught one of the armours. We defeated the spiders and knights handily and gained some useful resources:

Cornelius - spider poison Diiroehn - spider carapace Myself - Phase Spider Silk NOTE: do some testing, can likely make something very useful out of this.

Closer inspection of the knights indicated that they are very old and have likely been stored somewhere but only recently activated.

We briefly rested before making the choice to go back and follow a new path.
[Session 2] After the spider fight I was a little dazed, following the party without really being aware of where I was, but we found a lighthouse like tower, with glyphs that could be activated with dragonglass.

We were beset by more spiders! These ones mechanical in nature. They were good at finding seams and connections in armour, taking apart Voroks scalemail with ease. After defeating them, the lads managed to take them apart, so I now have components to upgrade the weaving room! I'm so excited to go topside again!!

From the tower, we went to the Command Centre.

-We ran into the two gargoyles on the way there, and spoke briefly with Calcite while Gypsom threw boulders at another of the large robots. We seem to have struck up a friendship with the two.

The Command Centre is huge. We found 3 more skeletons, these ones elves, one of them crushed by a metal box. When time can be made, I feel we should retrieve them and bury them properly.

We were attacked by more contructs, closer in size to us. Once defeated, we became aware of a much larger construct approaching and hid from it.

[Session 3] -We continued to hide from the big bastard in a side room.

Diiroehn found a small, sentient rolling stone with an eye on it near his feet watching him. He yote it and the Big Bastard chased it out of the Command Centre.

Shortly after we were joined by Zellandria. Skarn travelled back topside and advised Zel of where we are. I chose to ignore Zels complaints at the time of a lack of service upstairs but will check in with the staff when I have time.

With the Big Bastard gone we were able to better search the room. Diir and Vorok retrieved some broken stone tablets from what seemed to be a writing desk.

The next room over had a huge table sized for giants to eat at, though some fallen masonry had broken it. The slab had a map carved into the surface so it seems to have also functioned as a war room. There were tubs of figures of drow and giants, with one tub marked 'losses' and a tablet ot match, showing huge losses over a 3 day period. Something terrible must have happened.,

-At the back of the room were statues, a memorial for deaths in war, with rubies placed in them and a bandolier of vials. The lads gathered around a dozen small rubies and the glass vials had a good enchanting material in them though it's not my speciality. Residuim perhaps?

Another of the rolling stones with eyes came in. Ilalai advised that she sent it a message and it seemed to respond.

We went back through the main hall to the room on the other side, which had a lot of chambers for constructs. Some were empty, others still held constructs but their dragon shards have been eaten. Further in were battlements, defending a huge door with an 8 pointed sun on it. It appears to be in lockdown mode.

Unable to move foward, we returned to the main chamber and went up the stairs at the back to an upper level, and what seemed to be the command room, though it lay dormant.

There was a trapdoor hidden in the ceiling. We decided to see where it led, which was to the roof of the command centre.

-Ilalai came up last and while she was still in the room, a small cluster of the rolling stones came in, clattered at her and left.

From the roof we saw the gargoyles fly in to the Command Centre, followed by a wave of the rolling stones and, behind them but still a ways back, some of the larger constructs.

-Calcite called up to us. We went down to him, he said his boss was coming. -By using some of the dragon glass on one of the arcance circles in the Command Centre, we were able to power the other circles and glyphs in the room. Huge floodlights light up the area below and near the gate. Voroc hit the outer portocolos door to close to stop the constructs. The glass is already crumbling. Dii went to touch a security glyph but saw other circles. The lights started to dim quickly. He saw lockdown. Touched it. The lower doorway started opening but slowly.

A huge boulder rolled into the room and unfurled into a large, stone being, named Marl, the maker of all the stone beings we've encountered so far. Marl and their companions refer to the constructs as "Walking crystal food people" and they are on our side as they want the contructs to stop.

We couldnt stay in the Command Centre and couldnt leave via the front door so we decided to make our way to the roof, but as we left a strange thig occured.

-A projected imagine in the middle plinth in the room. A giant floating head, partially rotted with long hair, weightless, as if underwater. It looked around the room. Looked like a veeeery dead giant. "Whats going on up there?! Are the Quori attacking?!" In ancient giant. Diiroehn spoke to it, said the Quori are dead, told the giant the constructs are attacking. The giant tried to command the command centre to open the gates but theres no power. "I AM CLOSE. I WAIT BENEATH." Dragonglass is meant to come from the foundry. Giant thinks Dii is a slave. "THE TOMB OF THE SLEEPING SON WILL NOT FALL TODAY." The spell ended. -With some difficulty, we all got to the roof, some assisting others. Ilalai appears to have made a rolling stone friend, apparently called a cobble, that has decided to travel with her. -Marl and the others are staying in the former homes of the giants, which they clal Stonehome. Marl easily jumped from the building and rolled away, while Calcite assisted us in getting Howlitzer off the roof. -We snuck around the constructs and made our way back to the grand staircase and top side.

Report Date

13 Feb 2020