The whole gang makes an appearance, despite a touch of rain and some early threats of conflicting commitments. The group currently consists of: Tim (Sir Brindal Karth), Nick (Brother Xavier), April (Sister Joann), and Chris (Peter Sangaree). Little Chris from some time ago is rumored to be making a reappearance at some point. There is a certain hope that he might rejoin the group…
The characters show up at Linus Link's airfield early in the morning to embark upon their way to Surreveil Valley. Fergus Clerihew (pronounced "Cler-oo") is loading up jerrycans with "spare fuel" painted on them in white paint. Peter, his flamethrower newly completed, looks on with unbridled lust. Peter asks if he can sit up front & watch the pilot, so Fergus uses an auto-torquing screwdriver to unbolt a seat and move it up forward. Peter compliments him upon the tool, so Fergus gives it to him as a gift (explaining that he has another one as a spare).
With the characters all on board and the plane taxiing out to the runway, Fergus provides some preflight instruction. He warns the characters to stay buckled in well, as they've got two mountain ranges to fly over and things could get a touch turbulent. He also explains that if the plane starts engaging in evasive maneuvers, there's probably a reason. Further, there are two free-floating harnesses on the dorsal surface of the aircraft for gunners. The characters start to wonder a bit about the relative sanity of traveling on Gwynneth.
Fergus Clerihew warns the characters that the flight will be at least three hours long, and that he'll serve some food sometime.
Peter Sangaree, sitting up front with Rebekah Clerihew, notices that both she and Linus Link's field controller operate with a total lack of regard for Llanfyrth Downport Air Traffic Control. Even worse, there are at least five or six other small airfields within fifty kilometers that do likewise. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Llanfyrth Downport issues instructions with little or no concern for any other operators. As Peter listens (and Rebekah heads down the taxiway), the Llanfyrth controller proclaims that there is an eight-hour blackout on local takeoffs due to "high-priority military shuttle operations." Linus Link's controller responds by informing Llanfyrth that he's having his aircraft take off in twenty minutes. Rebekah revs the engines while the Llanfyrth controller sputters over the radio.
Characteristically, Brother Xavier urps repeatedly as soon as the plane takes off. He is only barely reassured by the fact that Fergus keeps airsickness bags ("Reusable") stuffed into his back pockets. After an hour in the air, Fergus distributes lunch to the characters from a cooler: seabird-and-cucumber sandwiches, with dried & salted fish eggs on the side. Most of the characters enjoy them, with the obvious exception of Brother Xavier (who is simply grateful to get something into his stomach so he doesn't have to do any more dry heaves for a while).
The characters have some trouble inbound to the Surreveil Valley landing strip. As they approach, Rebekah discovers that the field transponder is down. This is something of a problem, as the valley is buried in mist and fog. Rebekah asks the characters to look for anything resembling either mountains or a landing strip. Brindal Karth comes to the rescue with his incredible telescopic, infrared Engineer's Eye. He spots the landing strip through the mist, helping Rebekah to land the plane safely.
The landing strip turns out to be a simple slab of ancient ceramcrete set about a kilometer away from a few simple houses on the river shore. Another cluster of stone buildings is visible to the north, at the rim of the valley. The downed transponder is housed in a simple concrete building to one end of the landing strip.
Suspecting that the group may need some food, Brindal Karth purchases all the sandwiches Fergus has left. Noting Peter Sangaree's gaze towards the "spare fuel" in the back of the aircraft, he also buys a jerrycan of it. Fergus charges him a total of 1 FB for the lot.
It doesn't take Fergus long to see why the transponder is down. The lock on the metal door has been neatly cut off with some kind of shearing blade, and the transponder itself has been disabled by a few sharp blows from something very precise. While Fergus checks the damage to the electronics, the characters spend time outside searching the muddy ground for footprints.
Having found nothing, the characters listen as Fergus tells them it will take him several hours to fix the transponder. In the meantime, the characters decide to head down to the village and see if the locals know what happened. Rebekah comments that the transponder had been working fine ten days ago when the last plane came by. The group leaves Bob Lungflook behind as protection for Fergus and Rebekah, arming him with Peter Sangaree's assault rifle. For his own protection, Peter gets out his spud gun. Fergus gives Sister Joann two flares. The group agrees that one flare means Rebekah should warm up the engines and get ready for takeoff, while two flares means she should take off immediately, leaving the characters behind.
The characters walk downhill towards the village, where they are met by two armed men, escorting a portly fellow who introduces himself as Ron Crooked Bluff, the Warden of the village of Beskee to the East. He tells the characters that they've arrived in the village of Empett, and enquires as to their purposes. The characters explain that they had wanted to speak to the monks, but were sidetracked by the damaged airfield transciever. Warden Crooked Bluff harumphs and allows as how he doesn't know nothing 'bout any "teknologie," but he doesn't doubt that the Monster must have something to do with it. The characters don't immediately shut him up, so he continues to explain that so far, two villagers from Empett have disappeared, and attacked one villager in Peg's Rook on the other side of the forest. He warns the characters not to stay out after dark, and to avoid the forest at all costs. In fact, he explains that contact with Peg's Rook has been cut off since the Monster started prowling some days ago.
The characters listen to Warden Crooked Bluff's explanation, then let him know that they'll be heading up to the monastery to talk to the monks. They assure him that they'll be indoors by nightfall.
On their way up towards the monastery, the characters stop by the airfield to find that Fergus Clerihew has just about gotten the transciever working again. They warn him and Rebekah about the villagers' "Monster", and suggest that the two of them head out before nightfall just for safety's sake. Both Fergus and Rebekah agree, and promise that they'll remind Linus Link that the characters will need to be picked up by the next supply flight, arriving in some 19 days. Fergus also mentions that the supply flight will be bringing in some additional parts for the transciever, including a new door. The characters bid them goodbye, then watch as their Luftking takes off and heads back towards Llanfyrth.
The characters spend an hour or so trudging up towards the monastery buildings. At the main gates, they are admitted by a lisping monk who leads them to His Honor Leros Nek Matook, the Abbot. Leros Nek Matook turns out to be a wizened old man who has little interest in geology and geographical records, as he prefers to spend his time in the pursuit of deeper knowledge, that of the science of the soul! The characters manage to dissuade him from holding forth on what is clearly his favorite topic by pestering him into having them taken to the library.
The monk in charge of the library, Brother Caldmon, appears to be of a much more practical bent than the Abbot. He, too, is surprised by the fact that the characters are interested in the old GyCeMiSS records, but is perfectly willing to offer them access. He takes them on a short tour of the stacks, wherein he points out the rather heavily-used section of mystical volumes favored by the monks (no more than 10,000 or 15,000 volumes of them), then points at the ranks of identically-bound printouts stretching far into the darkness. He tells the characters that he has over 400,000 volumes of records left by the original GyCeMiSS project. He also notes that all of this material was once stored in think-machine records, but that the weight of years have ensured that only an imperfect index remains usable. After a short conversation, he agrees to check into the characters' request, provided they do something about the Monster that the locals have been complaining about.
By the time the characters have finished speaking with Brother Caldmon, he points out that it is time for dinner. He invites them to eat with the rest of the monastery, an invitation they happily accept. Sadly, the monks' staple meal appears to be an extremely bland porridge mixed with local vegetables. All through dinner, the Abbot talks to the characters about philosophy while Peter engages in a series of losing battles to find any spice that will make the food interesting.
The characters theorize that the "Monster" the villagers are so terrified of is most likely a band of local outlaws who sabotaged the transciever to isolate the valley. To test this theory, they set up a night-time ambush around the now-repaired transciever. Everyone else hides in the brush and dirt around the landing strip while Peter Sangaree hides inside the transciever blockhouse with his shiny new flamethrower. Just to ensure that there is a suitably large supply of firepower available, Peter gives his spud gun over to Sir Brindal Karth, warning him that if the bandits turned out to have a vehicle, to avoid destroying it at all costs.
The "bandit" appears slightly after midnight, slowly coalescing out of the darkness to attack the transciever house. In the first few panicked moments of the attack, Peter discovers that the responsible creature is a horrific six-limbed golem equipped with a tail-mounted gatling gun and a pair of razor-sharp shearing claws. Wildly gushing flame at the thing while dodging it's claws, Peter manages enough rational thought to recognize it as an ancient Scorpion ARM military golem. This information proves to be of only secondary importance to the realization that it was out of gatling gun ammunition.
With the golem paying most of it's attention to Peter in the blockhouse, the other characters rush the thing, guns blazing and blades slashing. Sir Brindal Karth shoots holes in it's side with Peter's spud gun while Brother Xavier and Sister Joann cut pieces from it with their blades. By the end, the characters manage to disable the thing without sustaining severe injury.
With the golem safely incapacitated, Peter Sangaree sets to disassembling it. Even with the limited tools available to him, he manages to extract the optics, the radar set, the gatling gun, the claws, and the four-legged walker assembly. Unfortunately, he also manages to completely destroy the thing's brain.
While Peter feverishly works upon disassembling the golem, Brother Xavier leads the remaining characters in tracking it back to it's lair. The other characters don't speculate overmuch on his motives, but some suspect that he imagines a whole pack of the things just waiting for him to rush among them and strike them down in the name of the Pancreator and his Prophets. Sadly, their quest ends at the ruins of a few old buildings. Not much is recognizable, save for a single name plate reading, "Colonel Anwar Jas-al-Aheen." From this, the characters conclude that the place must have been an old military base.
The characters spend the next week waiting for Brother Caldmon to finish his research on the Fennen Marsh region. He manages to unearth the following details:
Brother Caldmon also provides the characters with an old map of the area, cautioning them that much of it is likely to be inaccurate by now. He also tells them that there may be additional information available, buried in the archives, but that it will take him substantial effort to find it. He offers to perform this work for them at a price of 1000 FB per month. He estimates that he will be able to find one additional piece of data per month until the archive has been completely examined.
The session ends with the characters still in the Surreveil Valley, waiting for Linus Link's supply plane to arrive and take them back to Llanfyrth. Each character gains 5 experience points.