Everyone showed up, plus one. Chris (Quan Drake of the Ur-Ukar), Nick (Angel), and Bruce (Elias Sauek) are all back. Tim is in attendance, but has become dissatisfied with his character, and has created another. His new character is Sir Irryl Li-Halan, a Novitiate of the Eskatonic Order. Luke is a new player, playing Novitiate Cletius of the Eskatonic Order.
A month has passed. Violence among the various fleets assembled in the Tethys system was suppressed fairly quickly after Imperial ships made threats against the Hazat and Temple Avesti homeworlds. Outgoing access to the Gate has been reopened.
Mah'sot has gone his own way, and title to Count Dulcinea's estate upon Vera Cruz has passed to Elias Sauek and Angel. Meanwhile Drake (the Ur-Ukar lord) has formed a fast friendship with Angel (the cybernetic monstrosity).
The characters' new estate is fifty acres of land (plus a nice house) on an island on Vera Cruz. The land holds little inherent value, and cannot be used for farming (all the usable farmland on the island belongs to other people).
There are several possible future careers for the characters. Some of them include:
The problem with most of these plans is that even a cheap aircraft will cost about 25,000 firebirds, far more money than all of the characters can muster (Elias' estimated income is about 200 firebirds per year).
The characters decide to head to Vera Cruz and then look for additional opportunities. Because all of the characters hold Passage Contracts with different groups, they agree to meet on Vera Cruz whenever they can get there. Angel and Drake are able to find a Charioteer ship quickly and can get there in two weeks. Elias is forced to look for a Scraver ship, and cannot reach Vera Cruz for another month and a half.
The Empyrean Luxury, a typical large-size liner, carries 560 passengers with 128 crew, and costs 500,000 firebirds to purchase. Estimating a 10% maintenance cost and a yearly return of 30% on capital, with 30 trips per year, cost for passage is about 12 firebirds (without counting any other costs) Considering that the Charioteers have a near-monopoly on space travel, a base cost of 30 firebirds per trip is a good estimate.
Given this estimate, Elias decides to take six weeks to get to Vera Cruz.
Angel and Drake arrive on Vera Cruz, and promptly hire a servant who is skilled at making piña coladas. They spend several weeks sitting around, waiting for Elias Sauek to arrive.
Vera Cruz is the second world of the star Santa Edine, while Dunsten is the third. Vera Cruz is quite hot in the summer, but is quite pleasant through most of the year.
One of the notable minor guilds on the world of Vera Cruz is the Jackaroos Guild, who herd a genetically-altered creature called (obviously) a jackaroo. There are none of these folks on Landers' Island.
The characters' land is on Landers' Island, adjacent to lands held by:
Major settlements and on Landers' Island
Elias meets the other two characters on the Scraver ship. Both are Eskatonic priests bound for Dunsten, though they intend to stop over at the Monastery on Landers' Island. One of them, Sir Irryl Li-Halan, a novitiate of the Eskatonics (Tim). His family has a small holding on Landers' Island, fairly close to the Monastery. The other is Novitiate Cletius, also of the Eskatonic Order (Luke). Both of them intend to look for Ur artifacts on Dunsten.
The other characters immediately offer to join them, and further offer the hospitality of their home. There is a minor crisis, as Elias realizes that Angel and Drake have consisted off nothing but piña coladas for the past month and have no solid food in the mansion. Fortunately, food is available at the market in Portsmouth and the crisis is averted.
The characters take a Corsairs Guild ship to the spaceport on Ayers, from where they can obtain a shuttle trip to Dunsten for about three firebirds each. The journey takes several days. The characters attempt to purchase rum-and-cokes to pass the time, but find that there is only water available.
A day out of Dunsten, the shuttle's alarms start to go off. A panicked steward explains that the alarm means everyone must get to an escape pod. Cletius and Irryl make it to one pod, Angel and Elias get to another, and Drake and a couple of crewmen get to a third. As the pods drop towards Dunsten, some characters spot a flight of about twenty needle-thin ships attacking the shuttle. Angel identifies them as Kurgen craft.
The three escape pods touch down across a 20 square mile area, along with about thirty other pods. Angel and Elias see an isolated second pod about five minutes' walk away. The only goods available within their pod are two person-days' of food and water. They head towards the second pod to find Drake and the dead crewman who accompanied him. They see no sign of the two priests.
| Character | Equipment & Carried Goods |
|---|---|
| Elias | Blaster pistol, 1 day of food and water, no armor |
| Angel | Two laser pistols, rapier (lent to Elias), 1 day of food and water |
| Drake | Personal shield, Palm Laser, dirk, knife, and 2 days of food and water |
The two priests land closer to the middle of the pattern of escape pods, and are able to find quite a few survivors very quickly. They gather what resources they can, then proceed to try and locate the other characters. Irryl uses a theurgic ritual to successfully locate the other characters, and also leads the other survivors in a (loud) hymn to raise their spirits and make it easier for other survivors to reunite with them.
The two groups meet after about three hours' time. The priests are accompanied by a large number of very depressed and scared survivors (63 of them all told). They have only enough food for slightly more than a day.
Irryl reveals that Dunsten has a large number of ley lines, which were probably the feature that originally drew the Ur to the world. He manages to locate an intersection relatively close to the crash site, and theorizes that from there, he may be able to locate a nearby settlement.
Irryl's Second Sight reveals that there is a single farmhouse located at the nexus, with a presence of some sort inside. The characters decide to immediately head to the farmhouse, though there is a fair amount of disagreement among the other survivors. In particular, one resident of Summerlund wants to head north, to a settlement he believes is only three or four weeks' march away.
All told, about thirty folks accompany the characters towards the farmhouse. It takes them three hours to march to the farmhouse, during which time the temperature drops severely, from about 20ºC to about 5ºC.
The farmhouse appears empty: there are no lights, and the fields look like they were recently harvested. Sir Irryl makes a Second Sight of the farmhouse, but suffers only a bad sensation and stumbles back. He staggers, and looks as though he had been mentally struck.
Angel attempts to pick the lock on the farmhouse door, but breaks his pick in the lock. In frustration, he lasers the door open. The building appears to be empty, though the residents left signs of being very normal (though prosperous) peasants.
Before searching the house, Sir Irryl uses a Cleansing ritual upon all the characters to protect them from hostile influences. Elias and Drake search the upstairs, and find nothing save for eight unoccupied bedrooms. Sir Irryl, Cletius and Angel search the basements and find a series of food storage rooms and sub-basements, including enough grain to feed everyone bread for about eight months (provided the grain-processing machine can be made to work). Sir Irryl finds a map of the world, while Elias locates the parts of a communications rig (which he reassembled with Volt Redemption).
From the map, it looks like the farmhouse is at the intersection of the Orthodox, Brother Battle and Eskatonic Order territories. The other group (who wanted to head north) are bound for Charlesville. From the map, they just might make it, though they need to travel across half a continent to get there. The Festival monastery (an Orthodox monastery) is closer. Elias proposes to repair the communicator, and send a signal to the Festival.
While everyone else is busy, Cletius searches through the personal possessions of the residents. In one of the bedrooms, he finds a greenish-white orb with Ur runes on it. When struck, it makes a strange resonant sound that carries through the entire house and gives him a pleasant feeling, as of a childhood memory long-forgotten. He swiftly hides the thing away in his robes.
By the time night falls, the outside temperature is down to about -3ºC. Everyone retreats to the basement and Elias restarts the generator to produce heat. The locals explain that the temperature is so low due to the fimbulwinter, which is beginning. At the height of fimbulwinter, the temperature will be as low as -35ºC.
Elias finds nobody is transmitting over the radio. He sends out an SOS, and is answered by the garrison at Charlesville. The garrison operator says that there is an order of radio silence due to the situation on Vera Cruz, and that a rescue party should be available within the next several days.
Elias notices that the lights in the lower level are starting to flicker. He immediately goes to the generator, and finds that the casing has been dented (recently). It is restored with a few simple repairs, but Angel is set to standing guard in the generator room (he sits there in the dark after spreading peanut shells across the floor).
After repairing the generator, Elias walks into the bakery and immediately freaks out (failing a Calm+Stoic Mind roll). He finds the remains of a human body scattered all across the room, and a small (30 cm diameter) hole in one of the (exterior) walls. Angel responds to Elias' screams, and investigates the situation. He determines that something appears to have broken in through the wall. By the time Angel finishes his investigation, Elias has retreated to the generator room and practically everyone else has gone to the bakery.
Sir Irryl and Cletius decide to investigate the Ur-artifact Cletius found. Sir Irryl uses Second Sight on it, and gets various vague, unhelpful sensations. However, he does manage to detect a hostile (hungry) animalistic presence somewhere aboveground. The Ur-artifact starts to produce the same pinging sound it made when Cletius first picked it up. Everyone who hears it has a vague pleasant feeling, as of a childhood memory long-forgotten.
Sir Irryl also realizes that the three ley lines cross about fifty feet beneath the ground.
Suddenly, the generator shuts down. Screams and a stony throbbing sound filter down from upstairs, where the rest of the survivors had been staying. Elias manages to turn the generator back on (at a phenomenal penalty), with aid from Sir Irryl's blessing, though the lights still flicker until he cuts out all the circuits save for the one right around the generator room.
Drake takes up his palm laser in his right hand and his (borrowed) rapier in his left hand and heads off into the upper levels to find the thing. He finds that the top level has collapsed, and that there are only twelve survivors left in the second level. One survivor, an old farmer named Chuck, says that he saw a blur go across the living room before the ceiling collapsed.
Everyone heads to the common room to investigate the damage. On the way back, the lights go out again. A quick check reveals that the generator itself is missing, wrenched from it's mounting bolts and vanished.
Irryl has a rather strong vision of a gargoyle-like creature, and has some indication that it may be somehow responsible for the group's current predicament. Drake advises that the best thing to do is stay down in the basement, where it is warm. Most of the other survivors agree.
Everyone hides down in the next-to-last floor and tries to stay warm.
That night, Sir Irryl has a vivid dream of the green orb (the Ur-artifact Cletius found earlier). He abruptly wakes, and feels drawn to one of the bedrooms, where he finds a similar red orb lying upon the bed. Sitting before the orb is a silvery gargoyle statue that matches the image he had of the creature before. He spends some time experimenting with the auras of the two orbs and their reactions to each other. He touches the red orb and suffers a burn (1 point of damage).
Elias wakes in the middle of the night. Oddly, he wakes up in the bakery, hanging from his legs by some kind of odd greenish slime that solidifies as he waits. He has taken a point of damage, and is stripped naked. From his right, he can hear a strange tapping sounds and dimly see signs of something digging through the wall.
Some time later, Angel wakes up suddenly, having inexplicably fallen asleep in his chair. He notices that Elias is missing, but that there is some shredded cloth where he had been. He alerts the others, who find Elias in the bakery, as noted above.
After Elias is freed, the two priests go back upstairs and find that the gargoyle statue has moved and has changed position. It now stands with it's hands outstretched to the sides. The red orb is hovering about an inch below the ceiling. When Cletius releases the green orb, it moves to float about an inch above the floor.
Elias tries shooting the gargoyle in the hand. His gun explodes in his hand, doing five points of damage. He stumbles and falls, his hand essentially blown off. Sir Irryl disinfects him, then Drake takes him off to find painkillers. Elias is forced to Remedy himself.
The two priests spend a lot of time using Second Sight and other similar gimmicks to analyze the one gargoyle, when the characters realize that there is a second gargoyle standing near the doorway. A large amount of psychic interaction between the two gargoyles and the two orbs follows, up until Drake tries shooting the second gargoyle with his palm laser. The beam scatters off the gargoyle and drains all the Wyrd from him. In anger, he first tries striking the gargoyle with a chair (which does nothing), and then carries it out of the room and throws it down a stairway (which does nothing to the gargoyle physically, but causes some kind of psychic change in the other gargoyle).
Drake organizes a work party to dig out the room, while the priests work to make the two orbs touch. They find that the orbs are growing closer no matter what. When the orbs almost touch, they start to counterrotate very rapidly. The first gargoyle hunches down (and it's aura shows fear). Some moments later, three more contemplative gargoyles appear near the doorway.
Sir Irryl puts the greenish orb on top of the reddish orb, and all four of the gargoyles animate. One of them grabs the green orb and runs away, while the other three tear each other apart. The one with the greenish orb flees through a wall (Cletius attempts to follow, but cannot pass through the wall). Meanwhile, the red orb (which is floating over the carcasses of the three gargoyles) changes shape and bores straight down into the ground, probably towards the ley line. It also bores a hole straight up into the sky, through the ceiling and outside. The hole is about 1.25m wide.
Drake and Elias look for some rope and heavy clothing so they can climb out and set up a beacon for the rescue expedition. Meanwhile, the two priests rappel down to the ley line nexus.
Sir Irryl and Cletius find the ley lines cross in a metal chamber. Several tunnels branch off from the chamber, and the temperature is quite temperate. The gargoyle stands in the center, the orb fused into its hands. Facing the gargoyle is a fresco of an "angelic" gargoyle standing with arms outstretched. The two priests spend some time exploring after claiming the site for the Eskatonic Order. They find many branching tunnels and passages, along with many wonders. They get the impression that the cavern they found is the top of a huge complex that may have been aboveground once.
Sir Irryl notes that the ley line is completely gone.
Two days after the discovery of the gargoyle site, two shuttles show up from St. Mardi to evacuate the survivors. The troops don't know what is happening on Vera Cruz to spark the radio silence edict, but they do know it is bad. The edict came from the Planetary Governor of Dunsten. They do know that they have lost contact with the engineering group on the Gate.
All the characters gain three experience points. Sir Irryl gains an extra experience point for being close to the answer (whatever that may be). Cletius gains an extra point for not breaking continuity. Elias needs to work on getting his hand replaced. As the session closes, the entire group is disembarking from the shuttles at St. Mardi.