3/8/1472 – 09:00
– The SC makes the slow and frightening journey into the massive
sea lock and up towards the surface, the pool of dingy blue light
above seeming to take forever to embrace them. Almost an hour later,
it reaches sea level, emerging in the middle of a huge lagoon in the
middle of a coral atoll, surrounded by unfamiliar blue ocean. A
single stone channel leads to a small port, crowded with an array of
customised ships, many of which bear the marks of pirates or slavers,
whilst the atoll itself is home to a ramshackle settlement of leaning
stone and wood buildings, walkways, and hovels, which stinks of
humanity and burnt meat.
By the time the SC
arrives at the surface, the sun has been up for a while, and already
the air shimmers and stinks, carrying the reek of the town towards
the party, and the group get their first glimpse of the pirates,
outcasts, vagabonds, slaves and slavers that make up the ever
changing population of this place – the freeport of Dhenz'Vashal, a
famous stopping point for all kinds of scum that lies some 300 miles
to the southwest of the Auric Isles.
With a command from
the assassin (relayed via “Captain” Shnecke), the SC limps
towards the harbour, where the party pay to berth it for three days.
09:01 – 17:30
9/8/1472 – The group actually end up spending the next six days in
the town, hiring a new crew, drinking (Shnecke finally finds a brew
able to overcome even his cast iron constitution; a horrible spirit
called “Festercrabs Brown Eye”), gambling, and in the case of the
assassin and warlock, purchasing substances both lethal and
intoxicating from a local Inn owner named Deezel. They stay at one of
the tumbledown “inns” - a place called “The Fighters Gift” -
who's sign is decorated with the lost teeth ripped free in the many
fights that break out in its disorganised, stinking tap room, and
conduct their interviews for new prospective crew members next to its
sticky, fly haunted bar.
On the morning of
the 9th, the party finally managed to secure enough men to
sail the SC, as they obtain a large number of slaves from the captain
of the Shackled Lord (a vast and powerful vessel with an
armoured hull, potent weapons, and an elemental engine capable of
giving it immense speed and manoeuvrability); one Tenubi Akrai. The
men are all sailors, and as soon as they are taken on board the SC,
are given a stark choice – “Serve on this vessel, work off the
price we paid for you, and you will have your freedom. Foment mutiny,
or try and shirk your duties, and you shall find death.”
Not a single man
disagrees to serve on the group's ship, and despite being set free of
their shackles, non try to escape...
...This saves all
of their lives, for later that day the reality of the post-sundering
world comes crashing down on Dhenz'Vashal with terrible, brutal
force.
17:31 – 17:40 –
The day has been long, hot and humid, so few have given any notice to
the tropical storm brewing to the south. As the winds quicken, and
the skies darken, people gives thanks to Tungart, for the breezes
take away much of the oppressive stench and clammy heat of the
township, and the rain that will soon fall will be a refreshing
chance for all to clean themselves thoroughly of their accumulated
filth. Inside the Gift, the party are celebrating their
successes in the town, and are planning the next leg of their
journey. As the first, fat drops of warm rain begin to hammer the
roof, the air thrumming with the continual booming roar of thunder,
they order drinks, and prepare to enjoy their last night on the isle,
before heading off in search of Takeshi and the Moon.
Soon the storm
arrives, and the tapping of rain becomes a constant din, itself
barely audible over the bellowing thunder, the creaking of the inn's
structure and the howling winds. Suddenly another sound – an
indescribable shrieking that tears at the nerves and drives men to
their knees with dread – cuts through the cacophony of the storm,
accompanied by a blast of fiery light and a sudden wave of crushing
heat. Horrible screams briefly flicker through the deafening morass
of sounds, and the night outside is suddenly filled with dancing
orange and red light, as hissing clouds of steam, whipped into
spectral forms by the storm winds, leap past the windows.
The air tastes
suddenly of metal, and a strange pressure infuses the atmosphere with
its alien power. Realising that more than a normal storm is raging
outside, the group push past the other howling patrons, and throw
open the doors, the screaming winds immediately slamming, scorchingly
hot into them, their skin reddening at once in the forge like heat.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS
THAT?” Screams Varracuda, his eyes barely open against the drying
bite of the storm winds.
“I have no idea!”
Replies the priest, his hands reaching for a seeing stone he had
recently remembered he possessed, “But I'll tell you this. It's way
too powerful for us to tackle!”
“It” is a 30'
high mass of animate magma and fiery gasses, possessed of some kind
of rudimentary sentience. Vaguely anthropomorphic, it is a thing in
constant motion, as its molten body hardens into stone where the
storm touches it, before its inner heat melts the crust and returns
it once more to glowing liquidity. Enough heats radiates from it,
even through the storm, that anything within 20' of it spontaneously
combusts – men, trees, animals and several buildings – and a
number of fires rage around it, adding their smoke and sparks to the
maelstrom of flame, lightning and noise ahead. It plods towards the
Fighter's Gift, and the group are suddenly jostled as
panicking men move to flee to the imagined safety of their ships. The
horror seems oblivious to everyone, simply stumbling drunkenly
through the heart of Dhenz'Vashal, obliterating everything unlucky
enough to get too close.
Realising that even
they would be unable to destroy this thing before it burned them to
death, the group join the fleeing pirates and sailors, running
towards the SC, where a number of ladders have already been thrown
down, to allow them, and a number of other panicked Dhenzian's on
board.
17:41 – 19:12:
From the deck of the their ship, the group watch the Molten Monolith
slowly destroy the town. They flinch as it rolls over the Fighter's
Gift, and a huge ball of blue flame briefly erupts from it, the
last bottles of Festercrabs erupting in the unnatural heat of the
elemental's presence. They also flinch when a particularly stupid or
self believing group of would be heroes attempt to engage the
gigantic thing in combat – all of them dying within seconds as
their armour, flesh and entrails are burned to charcoal by its
blasting presence.
Eventually, with no
precursor to give warning of its happening, with the township in
flaming ruins about it, the massive elemental simply disappears in a
deafening wash of sizzling noise, and a dull flash of fiery, golden
light. Clouds of bitter smoke and the dancing of storm torn flames,
are the only things that move within the blackened ruin, and from the
few ships remaining that have not fled the stricken port, rise howls
of loss and despair.
The group however,
are hatching a plan...
20:30 – 20:50:
Concealed by the smoke belching from the ruined town, the storm still
howling about the island, the group leave the SC, and creep to shore.
Cautiously, they make their way to the ruins of Deezel's inn,
shrouded in a protective ritual cast by Grigori, which stops the
intense heat still radiating from the melted stone from burning them.
Deezel, stood as close as he can bear, spots them, and begins to
point and shout, his words lost over the noise of the storm, for he
has worked out exactly what they up to.
“So,” Whispers
Thatari to the rest of the group, “the drugs are kept in a small,
reinforced chamber in the basement. Deezel must make a fortune from
selling them, as there was a stone golem watching over the place.”
“Do you think it
will still be there?” Asks Shnecke with a feral grin.
“Very, very
probably.” Replies the genasai with a wince.
Soon the group
arrive at the ruin of Deezel's inn – now a mass of blackened
masonry, shimmering heat and billowing smoke. With Shnecke taking the
lead, the group begin to hammer at the heat softened rock of the
floor, and soon it is flaking away, smoking as the winds catch the
fragments, and carry them aloft. Still shouting in the distance,
Deezel can only watch with joy as something goes wrong; a huge
explosion of rock, dust and super-heated air enveloping the group,
dropping all but Thatari into a smoke filled crater (actually the
basement).
20:51 – 20:55:
Agonised, the party find themselves prostrate, blasted, dazed and
bleeding, half buried under searing chunks of rock, dropped into the
basement of the inn by the sudden escape of trapped, super-heated
air, liberated explosively by the first pick to break through the
stone of the floor. To make matters worse, something huge lumbers
towards them, its potent magics flashing in burst of multicoloured
flame from the runes carved into its otherwise featureless face and
chest. The Stone Golem, active and in a frenzy as its internal magics
turn wild in the planar aftershock of the earlier dimensional breach,
strides forth to crush those before it...
