Hook:
A broken circuit stalls the tower. Find the spark, restore the flow, and hope R9 isn’t watching too closely
046 - 250917 - Power Struggles
Date:
446 PC, Brightwane 56
Players:
Ragnum
Dev
Garth
Draylor
Loot:
3sp (75 cp each, let's not get the banner involved)
12 sheets of Quality paper (1/2 to Dev and Ragnum)
Puzzle Toy
Wand of Pyrotechnics [Dev]
Horn of Silent Alarm [Garth]
Candle of the Deep [Ragnum]
Cloak of Billowing, sized for gnome [Draylor]
Locations:
Dawnrise Heights - Gnome Zone
After Actions:
Dev
As our second month in the Riftspan nears its end, I marvel at all of the things that I have seen and done. More than anything else, I wonder how I am still alive. The day started off innocently enough. We even had some nice weather for a change – just a hint of the summer heat, without any of the rain or humidity we’ve been having lately. I went up to the Tower to have a look at the locked door that stopped the previous exploration efforts. Draylor and Garth tagged along. Ragnum’s supposition that we need to find a missing piece for the mechanism to open the door seems likely. We ran into Ragnum there, and he had an idea to look for a gnomish school of applied mechanics that he’d read about in some old civic journal entries. It seemed like a good plan – even if we didn’t find exactly what we wanted, we’d probably find something interesting. And it seemed safe enough.
Sophia, no mission with Draylor should ever be considered “safe.” The Dawnrise Heights neighborhood wasn’t very far from the Tower, and we found the school easily enough. It was a little odd that there didn’t seem to be any of the candle remnants on the doorsteps of this area that we’d seen in other neighborhoods, but we stayed on task. We explored the school, and ran across the remains of what looked like a faculty lounge that had seen a fire. Although most everything was burned, we found a Wand of Pyrotechnics that I’ve added to my wand collection. We found a workshop area with more loot that was shared among us. We hadn’t managed to find the missing part we had been looking for, but it was a somewhat productive trip nonetheless.
We came to a gallery honoring some of the school’s famous alumni, and Draylor decided to knock over the bust of some famous gnome that shattered as it hit the ground. Because of course he did. He said he was trying to find some kind of magical battery inside the busts, but I should have known the boy was more likely to find chaos. He triggered a bunch of janitorial/guard mechanical devices that tried to remove us before we could do any more damage. The fight was rough – there were a lot of them, and only four of us. It quickly became apparent that retreat was our best option, but the constructs had cut us off from the way we came in. I ducked through the door on the other side of the room, which led to a dorm that unfortunately didn’t have an exit. At least it let us fight them off at the doorway, with Draylor tanking in his bear form and Ragnum serving as our healer.
We prevailed, and we even found something that might open the door in the Tower. But that is an adventure for another day.
Ragnum:
Steve, there is so much in the city that we really have managed to fully explore. As you know from my previous report, our exploration of the tower has been halted by a broken door mechanism. I had examined the mechanism, and I don’t think there is a way to open the door without replacing an essential missing piece—a small crystal magical battery, essentially a smaller version of the large batteries we have discovered several times. I haven’t encountered these yet, except in this door mechanism so I had to consider where we might find more of them we could salvage to fix the door. Then it occurred to me that with all the artifice we have seen in the city and tower there must have been workmen in the town to support it, so I looked in the governmental documents we have recover for any munching of tinkers guilds or businesses and found the following:
Entry 9359-K Date: E5.1220 LCC District: Dawnrise Heights Subject: Establishment of School for Applied Mechanics. Note: Curriculum approved for apprenticeships in metallurgy, miniature enchantments, and structural gearwork. Funding matched by Senate grant. Status: Active.
With this information, I headed to the tower to double-check the crystal's size to make sure I knew what I was looking for and happened on Ragnum, Dev, Garth, and Draylor examining the door for solutions, so I recruited them to come with me to the “School of Applied Mechanics.”
The school was found on a zone settled by gnomes (Gnome Zone) in a quarter of the city, north and west of the tower that I haven’t spent much time in, called Dawnrise Heights in the pre-collapse area. The large brass doors of the school had a tag from our survey team that indicated they were unable to enter, but we were able to get the door open.
Inside, we found an amazing workshop where the clockwork golems we encountered were assembled—you really should send some of the artificers in camp to take a look at this workshop, as that was not the expertise of our particular scouting band that day. Eventually, we found ourselves to a room honoring the inventors of the past and Draylor busted one of the moving statues to see if it contained the object we sought. Unfortunately, this set off an alarm and we were attacked by at least twice our number in clockwork golems. We managed to fend them off, and in their wreckage, we found an item we think will repair the door in the tower. Now that we have completed the initial sweep of the city of danger, we really should do a more in-depth search of any of the major buildings or businesses in the city—there is clearly important things that we have missed. Now we just need to recover from our battle and then we can go back to the tower and open that door!
Hook:
A heist of some description is planned
074 - 260414 - Zeit Heist
Date:
446 PC, Ashfall 19
Players:
Sorrell
Dev
Loot:
Locations:
Dawnrise Heights - Gnome Zone
After Actions:
Dev's letter to Sophia:
Eda says I’m dumb and ugly, and I’m sure you’d agree with her, Soph. She’s convinced that Nettie has romantic feelings for me and that I should go talk to her. I’m still not sure how my personal life became Eda’s business, but here we are.
Sorrel showed up at my home towards the end of that conversation, and I think he only heard the “dumb and ugly” part. Somehow, he decided the conversation was about him. He does tend to project a lot. He wanted someone to keep him company (watch his back) while he explored the gnomish School for Applied Mechanics. Sorrel seemed very excited about getting the workshops and forge going again to make things and earn respect, but I think he may be choosing poorly since the building - and that whole district - were designed for people who are much smaller than us.
The place was just as cramped as I remember. I am extremely jealous of Die-Anna’s ability to change her form at will - I can do a lot with illusions, but I haven’t worked out how to fool the universe yet. We found a communication board with notes in two different hands - it seemed like an argument between two people who rarely met in person. The notes were in gnomish, of course, and neither of us can read it. But Sorrel was curious, and I have to admit I was too. I took the time to cast Comprehend Languages, and we were right. Someone named Felkis was arguing with someone named Zilpip. The early notes concerned admissions at the school, then rebuilding, then questions about when the walls would come down. Eventually, they progressed to issues with supplies and rations. The day shift and the night shift blamed each other for shortages. One of the last notes said “I know you used the last core! The Tower said the location had been repaired. I had earmarked it for <some proper name that we had no reference for>.”
We explored a bit. We found a dining room with a large hole in the ceiling and centuries of garbage. I saw something sparkle and I picked up a well-crafted model of a bridge that I decided to keep as a souvenir. We found another room with pedestals in a grid pattern and equations on a chalkboard. Sorrel said it was a testing chamber for magical arrays. There was a kitchen that opened onto a courtyard that was dominated by a single, enormous tree surrounded by benches.
Sorrel wanted to find the workshops, so I helped him pick a very solid lock on a thick door. It opened into an area with a series of locked, numbered doors. Sorrel tried to pick the lock on door number one, and he ended up springing a trap that nearly killed us. He did manage to cast Feather Fall to lessen the damage when we fell into a spike trap pit, but we were still poisoned. I used Misty Step to get out and threw a rope to help him get up.
Sorrel wasn’t keen on trying to pick any more locks, and I didn’t want to show him up if I had better luck than he did. I also didn’t think it was a good idea to start brute forcing them with magic… so we ended up going back to the unlocked rooms we’d skipped. We found a supply closet, a student lounge, a study hall, a bathroom, another testing room, and a gallery for student models similar to the bridge I’d picked up earlier.
One of the more interesting rooms that we encountered was a thesis or dissertation library, with hundreds of scrolls organized into cubbies by date, ranging from the 1240s to 1316. The text was beyond us both, but Sorrel seemed excited by the technical drawings. He thought he could make use of some of them, so I helped him grab an assortment.
We found our way into the office of the school administrator, one Callnan Namble-Bample, which looked like it had been abandoned almost immediately after the collapse. Sorrel found a secret drawer in his desk that opened if you touched a bird decoration in a particular way. He took a few platinum coins, a scroll of Fireball and a blue pen. The administrator had a diagram of the school on the wall, and I cast Comprehend Languages again to figure out if it had anything interesting to say.
We learned that the school had been constructed in multiple phases, starting in the 1220s with the dorms, workshops. They added an alumni hall in the first expansion. A second, larger expansion happened in pieces between the 1270s and 1290s. By the 1300s, there was a push to standardize the way all the pieces of the school looked, and to make it seem more Tharnic. The tree in the courtyard was planted in 1278. We also found a draft of a letter to the Senate asking for more resources for the school, but it was never sent.
We decided that we’d had more than enough exploration for one day, and I went to visit Maris to be treated. I think she was happy to have a physical ailment to treat, rather than all of the psychological ones she’s had to deal with since coming to the Riftspan.
– Dev076 - 260422 - Faux-Club
Hook:
Who do these people think they are trying to run fight club without you guys? Rude!
Date:
446 PC, Unknown
Players:
Sorrell
Loot:
NA
Locations:
Dawnrise Heights - Gnome Zone
After Actions:
Sorrell
Dear Kristoff,
Holy SHIT man!! Where do I even begin?!? I guess it starts at the whole fight club thing (long story). Was scoping out this new fight club started by the combat unit, and they’re fucking awesome! They had a union, training, it was unbelievable!!! The best part, they were soooo nice!! We were riffing and joshing, and I brought some good shit to the table. They have these performative battle arcs, and I was able to have my work shown AND a three minute hype time before intermission!!! And they loved me! I’ve been dubbed “The Mad Mechanic”. Dannon and Penny and Sheila performed so well!! To keep working there, I’ve signed for a temp transfer. And honestly? I don’t regret it. I’ve made more machines in one day than in the last MONTH. Hope things are going well in that desk job you landed. And tell gran I said hi! Also, tell her
I’m not going back to Waterdeep. No she didn’t waste money, I was on scholarship.Tell her I’m doing mage stuff.Your favorite brother, Sorrell
Unresolved Threads:
item 1
item 2