Bruce complains that it is difficult to come up with sufficiently snarky side commentary when he's actually running the game. Chuck (Quent Lawrence) suggests that he might just be out of practice, as the Yaggo's Boat summaries were masterworks of snarkiness. Chris (Dmitri Baranov) points out that the rattling noise is not Bruce's computer, it is a cat toy that his own cats prefer to dump in the water bowl. Paul (Smith) groans and suggests that everyone should not be so active, as his back hurts and watching people move around is agony to him. And then Tim (Christophe Joseph Pépin) walks in to show that he's going for the skinhead look again. Bruce shudders.
The Spaniard has dysentery, so the others head up to the 56th floor of the Emperor Tower to get away from him. Dmitri Baranov agrees to poke his head up first, but only after making sure that Christophe Joseph Pépin has a full collection of selenium poultices, and is far enough in the back of the group to ensure that he isn't going to be killed by whatever takes out the rest of the group. He emphasizes, "And if there's a dozen things on fire heading for you, run bitch!"
He sees a bookshelf full of rotted books ahead of him, and an eternal flame to the right. Nothing dangerous. Everyone else follows him up. A nearby chamber holds an arcane sigil on the floor; Pépin goes over to take a look at it, with Klaus Heigen nearby to provide any necessary violence. He asks himself, "What is this place?" He finds that he has no idea.
Baranov yells from out in the corridor, "It's a meditation chamber, idiot! Monks used to pray here!"
Pépin replies, "So I guess I shouldn't take a whiz on it...?"
Baranov heads down the corridor and finds himself faced by a khalgun-gatat gannau, which stabs him viciously. He feels no fear, as he has already figured out several useful strategies for dealing with Martian clockwork zombies. He follows Plan Number One: he goes berserk and chops it into pieces.
Quent Lawrence decides that he will provide Baranov with some unnecessary help. He readies his rifle and yells, "Out of the way, bitch!" And then a second khalgun-gatat gannau attacks him from the right flank. He backpedals and shoots, staggering the creature.
Smith abandons the Russian and charges to Quent's rescue. He chops his way into the khalgun-gatat. The creature twitches. Pépin whirls around and fires his mab-yetso at the thing. The khalgun-gatat goes down.
The characters are happily hewing their way through the local defenders when a ghostly apparition of a decayed gukin-lugal in archaic aristocratic dress wafts through the wall and attacks Smith, who feels a chill. Smith strikes back and is disconcerted, but unsurprised, to see that his blade simply passes through the image. Heigen shoots at the image, also to no effect.
Quent tears an eternal lantern from the wall and decides to go all out. He swings the lantern at the ghost. The lantern goes completely through the ghost then explodes against the wall, spraying phlogiston everywhere. Quent deftly avoids being burned by his own attack, then watches with satisfaction as the ghost is driven away by the blast. On the minus side, the stone floor is on fire.
From further down the corridor, a khalgun-gatat wev steps out and takes a shot at Smith. Smith responds by charging it. Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! Baranov observes this process and comments, "That's gotta be threatening!"
The khalgun-gatat wev responds to Smith's rush by reversing its mab-yetso to use it as a club. Pépin calls out in agony, "Don't hurt the rifle! Oh please, don't hurt the rifle! Those things are precious as children to me!"
Baranov points out, "It doesn't care!" Pépin cries as he watches the khalgun-gatat ruin the rifle against Smith's indestructible hide. Smith finishes the thing.
Pépin cries to see that the khalgun-gatat's mab-yetso is destroyed. But he gathers up the fifteen rounds of ammunition as if it were heroin. An armorer might be able to repair the weapon.
Pépin dodges into the center of the floor and finds the generator for the ghostly creature Allgalldy. The generator consists of a central chamber and two aetheric generator nodules. He shoots one of the generator nodules with his last mab-yetso round, but doesn't quite destroy it. He yells, "Heigen! Get in here!"
Baranov hears Pépin's call and runs in from the other side. He risks aetheric oblivion without even thinking about it as he chops the other generator nodule apart with his axe.
Smith wanders over to ask, "What's going on over here?" Pépin, Heigen and Quent are still blazing away at the last matrix nodule with pistols. Slowly, they chip it away. It finally explodes with a resounding boom. Pépin retreats behind cover of the wall. He reflects, "Whew! I survived! Too bad about Heigen. Oh, Heigen! You're alive! How 'bout that."
Pépin examines the ruins of the aetheric machine. It turns out to be a sort of coffin, containing a heavily mummified gukin-lugal body in decayed robes that resemble what the ghostly image was wearing.
The obvious loot includes:
Pépin suggests that the ruins of the aetheric coffin might be an artifact that the Lemdok would be interested in, if the characters could move it away. It's pretty heavy.
The others search the floor. Baranov finds an intact Text to Focus the Mind, in Xea-Osk. For no good reason, he understands that studying the text for 200 hours will grant the student two points in the Meditation skill.
The characters continue on to the next floor. They enter into a large open space, two floors high and grandly decorated. Sweeping staircases rise up on either side of the chamber. There is a throne flanked by two eternal lanterns on one end and three complicated aetheric devices on the other. Baranov takes a look at the place, then ducks back down. He proposes that actually going up into the chamber would be very, very dangerous. He proposes that he and Pépin spend some time researching the one they have.
Quent comments, "Hey, this is like the Artifact Hunter! 'I have this strange alien artifact, and I have no idea what it does, but I'm going to poke it with a stick anyway.'"
Pépin pokes his head up to look around. He concludes that the devices upstairs are not the same as the one downstairs. Baranov has heard stories of the ancient Xea-Osk being able to preserve their elders to access their knowledge through dream crystals. He things that might be what the three machines are. The chamber was clearly someone important's throne chamber. Smith suggests, "Perhaps then they've got someone important's father, grandfather and great-grandfather shelved up there in dry storage."
While everyone else debates, Quent decides to go take a look. Baranov wishes him good luck, then comments to Pépin sotto voce, "Aim your rifle at his head."
Quent examines the three chambers. He can see that there is a body inside each of them. The first is an old gukin-lugal in what must once have been fine robes. The second is the body of one of the urgu-subur insect people. The third, based upon his moustache, looks to be Dutch.
Quent yells back to the others, "Guys! I got a gukin-lugal, a morlock, and a Dutchman!"
Baranov muses, "I guess we can trust a Dutchman."
Then Quent realizes that the three chambers each bear an inscription in Xea-Osk. The language is flowery and archaic, but still plenty readable. He and Pépin translate the plaques for the others.
Pépin theorizes that some Dutch pirate might have made it into the tower. And then the clockwork monsters found him, didn't recognize him, and put him into the communion chamber to try and interrogate him. Quent and Baranov suggest that the defenders of the tower would be unlikely to disturb their own communion chambers. They think he crawled inside to save himself from some Martian monstrosity, unaware of what the chamber would do to him. "Oow! Horrible needles!"
Smith thinks the ancient Martians developed space travel long before humans had civilization and abducted Dutchmen and married them. Nobody else pays attention to this theory.
Then Quent points out that at one time, the third chamber probably had Takghra-Gauba-Nakhba's body in it. If she was dead at the time, she might not have made it very far after leaving the chamber. The characters execute a quick search. It turns out that there is the body of a gukin-lugal female behind the third chamber. Baranov comments, "Gee, we shouldn't have missed that, should we."
The characters notice that there is a headset and a stone bench near each of the dream-chambers. Baranov, thanks to his knowledge of Martian artifacts, suspects that putting the headset on will allow access to the dreams of the chambers' occupants. He tries out the Dutchman first. He finds himself looking through the eyes of Wilhelm Voort, an unsuccessful Dutch merchant turned privateer. He is standing upon the deck of a small skiff, fleeing from the crippled hull of the man's ship, abandoned after all the air plants died and the atmosphere turned foul. He can see several other skiffs escaping, and a French frigate hunting them down one by one. He realizes that the frigate is moving as if it is unaware of the presence of the privateer vessel, which is hidden in the shadow of an asteroid. It is possible that the ship is still out there.
Baranov also determines that if he spends enough time contemplating Voort's dreams he can obtain up to two points of training in either Intimidation or Leadership, to a maximum of two points.
Pépin realizes that Voort is wearing a shirt that was fashionable about two years ago. Then Smith tries the headset and is amazed to find that it works for him. He gets to feel what it's like to be fleshy. He complains to the others, "Euww! I feel unclean! My tongue can taste everything!" But he is also able to apply his astronomical knowledge to figure out where the incident happened.
Pépin decides that he must be next to try a headset. Of course, he goes for the insectoid torture victim. Quent watches Pépin's body twitch, and comments, "Oh, he's doing the bug dream again. Just as long as he doesn't start murmuring 'Kafka! Kafka!'"
Pépin finds himself to be the Explorer Uikjekpanvik, standing on a plaza on the moon Iapetus. The horrible orange bulk of Saturn stands motionless in the sky. Strange, alien ziggurats surround the plaza, most in a state of advanced decay. He finds his gaze drawn to the horizon, yet he cannot explain why. And then he sees something in the sky, circling in low orbit. It is clearly a ship, but of chillingly alien design and unbelievable scale. The thing is obviously the size of a small city. He can make out three huge aetheric wings, one of them broken and shattered.
Pépin concludes that the urgu-subur might have come from Saturn.
Contemplating Uikjekpanvik's dreams can provide one point per 100 hours in Navigation (Space), Karate, Urgu-Subur language, or CF: Urgu-Subur, to a maximum of three points.
Quent tries the gukin-lugal Nagau-Amtam next. He blows his Will roll. Pépin and Baranov notice that he is still under the helmet after two hours, with no sign of emerging any time soon. They pull him out. He's pretty disoriented, but he does wake up. He spends three hours murmuring, "Towers towers towers towers." The others think that he would be at a -2 penalty to do anything useful for that time, were he to actually try.
Pépin observes Quent's reaction, then chirps out, "I'm gonna try!"
Baranov cautions, "I think that one's broken." But he is unable to dissuade Pépin in his quest for yet another mind-altering experience.
Sadly, Pépin is unable to match Quent's experience. He returns after a few minutes to report that Nagau-Amtam really thinks of nothing but towers. Solid, erect towers, piercing the sky. Quent wryly comment, "I bet he was gay."
Contemplating Nagau-Amtam's dreams will provide one point in Martian Artifacts for every 100 hours, or one point in Architecture for every 200 hours, up to a maximum of four additional points of Martian Artifacts or two points of Architecture.
Then the characters realize that they have not examined the other half of the room. They walk over to see that there is a figure seated upon the throne, surrounded and penetrated by an array of clockwork devices. They are quite alarmed when the figure's head and arms move, and it rattles out, "What manner of creature are you that you do not bow down before the great Lemdok Allau-Agesh-Nakhba-Htackhan."
Quent replies, "Yo, bitch! I'm here!"
This doesn't go over well. The ancient wheezes out a call for servants, "Allgalldy... Allgalldy... Why does he not come to my call? Where are my slaves? Where are my guards? I cannot bear this insolence!"
Baranov decides that the truth treatment will be best. He tells the ancient noble, "We ran into him in the hall below. He said we should cover for him, because he wanted to take a smoke break."
"Allgalldy!"
Baranov tries an alternate strategy, "He's gone. His machine broke and he got away."
The Lemdok rasps, "The machine was made to enslave him forever!"
Baranov explains, "Well, it still does. His body is still inside. He just can't do the ghost-walks-through-walls thing anymore."
The characters start to joke with each other in front of Allau-Agesh-Nakhba-Htackhan. He threatens them. It is very clear that he still believes that the Trois Tours Empire is a huge, important political entity, and that he remains firmly in control of his part of it. Baranov tells him the truth. He rages. Fortunately, his short-term memory is not so good so the characters can easily bluster their way past any missteps or breaches of protocol. Baranov complains, "Great. So every day we're going to have to listen to him rant for servants that never come for a couple of hours."
Eventually, they ask him about his beloved wife Takghra-Gauba-Nakhba. Allau-Agesh-Nakhba-Htackhan scoffs. He describes how he married her to obtain title to the Southern Province from her weakling father, how she bore him three sons, two of them not worth the skin it took to hold in their valueless guts, and how he eventually managed to take over all of her father's realm. He seems almost gleeful when he describes how he had every last one of her relatives scourged and executed in front of her, and seems to genuinely understand why she simply wasted away and died afterwards.
Smith reflects, "At least now we can date his reign. He must have come from the ass-end of the Empire, when the rulers were insane."
The characters decide to head upstairs. Pépin tells the others, "You know what we need for this spike? An enormous French flag."
The characters find that the top floor is dominated by a huge aetheric observational, known to the unenlightened as a telescope. The whole place is an observatory. Baranov and Smith figure out how to make the observatory work. Smith brings up a really nice view of the French military outpost on Phobos.
Pépin challenges Smith to find the derelict pirate ship. It's a bit far to resolve a ship, but Smith is able to identify a strange bulge on the side of an asteroid. Pépin asks, "But don't asteroids have strange bulges anyway?"
Quent mocks him, "There's something strange out in space..."
Pépin immediately suggests that the characters go out and pick up a derelict ship so they can do an expedition to Saturn.
The characters return to the camp. Pépin is bubbly, "Egyptian! Good news and bad news. Good news is that we've cleared out all the automated defenses. Bad news is that we destroyed almost everything of value in the process. But we did preserve the preserved head of the dead Lemdok. He can talk to you, and call his servants, but his memory isn't too good and the servants are all dead."
The Egyptian is amazed, "That's fantastic news!"
The characters proceed to tell him all the wonderful details of their discoveries, including the dream-chambers and the trapped Dutchman. In the course of the discussion, they decide that they must salvage the ship.
Pépin is easily the most-committed to the salvage process, so he goes off to fetch the ship. He spends 2000 Lv on the project, plus another 3000 Lv purchasing a small ground-to-orbit skiff. It takes him four weeks. In the process, he learns 1 point in Administration. He comes back with a Small Aetheric Merchant ship in rather questionable shape.
Everyone else gains 300 hours of training time, most of which they spend in one or another of the dream-chambers. Baranov spends the first 200 hours learning Meditation from the book, then he learns a point of Leadership from Wilhelm Voort. The others are troubled by the fact that Baranov learned his Leadership skills from a pirate.
Quent spends his time with Uikjekpanvik, learning broken Urgu-Subur and Urgu-Subur Cultural Familiarity.
Smith picks up the Urgu-Subur language and Martian Artifacts. He avoids jumping into the human's mind: it is too unnerving.
Each character gains three experience points in addition to whatever training they picked up. Sanchez doesn't get the points from the adventure, but he will need to decide how he spent his 300 hours of training.