Mike has left the group due to other responsibilities, so the group has dwindled down to Chris (Pawnbroker), Tim (Laerynthe) and Nick (Mungo).
Messerbad decides to depart from the group to go join the Skin Adapoi, with the intention of wooing Agopon, the Skin Adapoi Speaker. He leaves them on the shores of the Lesser Sea, disappearing into the jungle.
The remaining characters are on the shore of the Lesser Sea, where Atrabanjin's crew dropped them. They elect to head downriver until they locate one of the Makers' Metal Roads. They travel for about three days, taking precautions to avoid being spotted from the riverbank.
Laerynthe spots a small six-legged furred beast caught in a simple snare trap. He kills the beast straight off. He also notes that the trap is of exceedingly crude design, and may have been assembled with someone's teeth. The characters cleverly hide and wait for the owner of the trap to reappear.
A demek trapper shows up after about two hours. The demek examines the trap, then takes out a spear and looks around. Laerynthe calls out in Maker, ordering him to drop his weapon. He does not comply, so Laerynthe shoots him dead with a Maker crossbow. Pawnbroker removes the bolt, attempts to make the wound look like an animal attack, and dumps the body into the river.
The characters then backtrack the demek's path, finally arriving at the Hill of Lies.
Laerynthe leads the group up the Hill of Lies, and is met by Couluk and one of the other Hill of Lies demeks. They have a short conversation, in which Laerynthe hides the truth somewhat and is transformed into a horrific creature for a time. The characters enter into conversation with Couluk, and describe why they are on the Second Plateau. Couluk tells the characters of the nature of the Hill of Lies, and also mentions that there is a Celebrant Festival Ground nearby. He assures the characters that the Hill of Lies protects them.
The characters make camp on the side of the Hill of Lies farthest from the Festival Grounds, in view of the (crude) demek village. They spend the night, interrupted only by the sounds of a Celebrant Festival (strangely dissonant when filtered through the power of the Hill of Lies).
The next morning, a delegation of demeks led by Couluk approaches the characters' camp. They are all dressed in their best feathers and furs. Couluk tells the characters that the Celebrants sang, and that one of the demeks' trappers is missing. The characters spend a lot of effort trying to avoid telling Couluk that they were responsible for the trapper's death ("The last we saw him he was floating down a river" "We didn't want anyone to see the body." "He had been shot by a crossbow.")
The characters finally manage to convince Couluk that the missing trapper was most likely slain by the Makers. They ask if any of his tribesmen have seen the Maker structures near the river. Couluk says that two hunters, Umbo and Oopok, have spent time exploring the Maker site, and know something of what is there. They provide a map to the characters showing the locations of the Maintenance Station, the Rendering Facility, and the Roundhouse.
Characters depart to investigate the Makers that evening with Umbo and Oopok. The two demeks tell the characters that there is one ford across the tributary that marks the boundary between the burned Desolated Zone and the Maker-inhabited regions.
The characters find a sentry equipped with a warning bell and a crossbow at the ford. There is also a tripwire and alarm on the "desolation" side of the ford that the characters only find when Laerynthe trips it. He tries to swim across with an eyesnake to quiet the sentry, but fails a Swim roll and is washed downriver. Umbo & Oopok create diversion while rescue is effected.
The characters' second plan is to hide most of their equipment on the Desolated side of the river, then use logs to float across. They hide in an eat-weed field for a day to watch the trains. They see several trains go by, in lengths ranging from three to eight cars. During their wait, Umbo spears a multi-legged beetle burrowed beneath the soil. Both the demeks and Mungo eat from it with gusto, and Laerynthe agrees to take several bites.
Some hours after he ate the beetle, Laerynthe becomes very sick (-3 DX, must roll HT-2 daily to avoid losing 1 hit, will recover after three successful rolls in a row).
Laerynthe manages to recover from his illness after three days of Pawnbroker's Physician care (successful Physician rolls give +4 to the HT roll).
Pawnbroker hunts during this time to provide food. Track roll daily, each successful roll provides 1d-2 days of food. He gets four days worth of food very quickly.
The characters discuss how to best hijack a train during their time convalescing in the demek village. They talk about the possibility of capturing a demek from the Maintenance Station to learn which train would be best to hijack, but conclude that the hijacking would be too tough to pull off.
Couluk agrees to provide five demeks (and himself) to help with the plan. He also says that he has heard that the Makers may have a "magic" way to detect when rails are damaged.
The characters decide that the best plan is to damage one of the rails when the train approaches. Laerynthe will take out one turret with eyesnakes, while Pawnbroker will use a single eyesnake to incapacitate the crew in the engine.
The hijacking group consists of: Pawnbroker, Laerynthe, Mungo, Couluk, and five other demeks (including both Umbo and Oopok). Laerynthe gives Mungo two Stealth potions (originally given him by Yordan), as they are nearly useless to him.
The group uses logs to get across the river, and to transport their goods across. They travel by night, because the hunters had earlier wanted to travel by night. Mungo spots thin wires along the rails. The rails are connected by two braces aboveground and two more braces belowground, on a set of wing-like flanges intended to stabilize the rails. Pawnbroker tries to dig down to the lower braces with a crowbar, and determines that it would take him about four hours to dig out one side of the rail (two demeks working with wide-bladed shovels would be able to do it in about an hour).
The characters speculate on what kind of blockade they could put across the rails to make the train stop, and decide that the best choice is to kill the demek sentry at the river ford and use it's body as a distraction.
Laerynthe sneaks up to the demek sentry pit at the ford and throws six eyesnakes among the two sentries. Three eyesnakes are knocked unconscious by the impact, but the remaining three paralyze the demeks for long enough that Laerynthe can cut their throats. He retrieves three eyesnakes, dumps one demek body in the river, and carts off the other to use as a decoy. Thanks to the Anklet of Pwir, he is untrackable when he does this.
The characters set up in a bunker next to the body of the demek, while Laerynthe hides about 30 meters away, hopefully close to where the guard car on the train would be if the train stopped at the demek's body.
The train consists of five cars: three cargo, one secure cargo, and one guard car with seven demeks and one Maker. The engine is crewed by three demeks and three Makers.
|
Car |
Cargo |
|---|---|
| Engine | None (3 Makers, 3 demeks) |
| Cargo | Burnstone (3 tons) |
| Cargo | Burnstone (3 tons) |
| Cargo | Machine parts |
| Secure Cargo | Demek drugs (1 ton) |
| Guard | None (1 Maker, 7 demeks) |
The characters' ploy to use a demek body to stop the train works well: the train stops several meters shy of the body, and a single demek (dressed in a heavy leather apron) emerges from the engine to remove the body.
As soon as the demek looks at the body, the characters attack. A big fight ensues. By the end, Couluk is badly wounded, the three Maker train crew are captured, and one demek trooper escapes into the eat-weed fields. Mungo and two demeks (one with Tracking-12) try to find him, but fail. Couluk survives the battle thanks to Pawnbroker's ministrations (down to -10 HT, but raised up to -6 HT after First Aid). However, one of the other free demeks dies of blood loss after the fight.
In addition to the train proper, the characters capture eight Maker crossbows and three hundred bolts. Laerynthe and Mungo each get one crossbow. The characters give the remaining weapons (including all of the demeks' hand weapons) to Couluk's demeks.
The characters force their captive Maker crew to remove their heavy armor, then get them to describe how to start the engines, how to detach cars, and how to use the Makers' special tools to remove the braces on the rail segments. The Makers are clearly completely terrified, but have no idea how to react save by being arrogant. They are infuriated by the characters' reluctance to let them climb upon their backs, and insist many times that the characters are incapable of understanding how the Maker train works. Nevertheless, Laerynthe manages to gain a temporary skill of 12 in Drive (Maker Trains) from their instruction.
Characters detach the last two cars, overpressure the engine's boiler, and speed off to Bridge-to-First. Mungo powders some of the burnstone to make it more flammable, to try and ensure that the train would inflict maximum possible damage upon impact.
Couluk's demeks do not participate in the final assault upon Bridge-to-First. Instead, they leave to take Couluk back to the village. Just before their departure, one of them spots another train approaching from the Maintenance Station. The characters are somewhat concerned about this development, but decide that first, they will be on their way before the second train arrives and second, the two cars they are leaving behind will act as a very effective blockade.
Twenty minutes out of the station, the characters move their gear and their prisoners to the last car. Laerynthe drives the engine up to the last minute, until Pawnbroker detaches the car and Mungo brakes them to safety. They take with them two track wrenches (to remove the bolts from Maker track junctions) and one connector wrench (to remove bolts from a train car connector).
The characters bring their car to a stop in the outskirts of Bridge-to-First. They flee across the eat-weed fields, with Pawnbroker taking up the rear and setting the fields on fire behind him. The characters manage to reach the riverbank, where they see a Maker and about fifteen demeks dressed like agricultural workers. Pawnbroker uses a Maker crossbow to shoot the Maker supervisor, causing the demeks to disperse.
While the characters are working to find a way across the river, Mungo spies a large black cloud approaching from the burning fields. Soon, the cloud resolves into a huge, eight-wheeled vehicle with an array of crossbow slits and a tall smokestack. The characters' Maker prisoners explain that it is a Rolling Fortress. The demeks aboard fire several volleys of crossbow rounds at the characters, but are too far away to have much effect.
The hijacked train crashed into the roundhouse of Bridge-to-First, destroying it and the two train engines within. The cargo of the characters' train was not particularly volatile, but a tank of industrial-grade firewater was present in the roundhouse. When it exploded, it did a significant amount of damage to the Cargo Yard, and minor damage to the Flesh-Rendering Facility and the Assembly House. The major consequence is that the Makers can no longer bring more than one train at a time into Bridge-to-First, dramatically reducing the amount of cargo that can be moved through the city to the Great Lifter. Even more telling, the damage to the Cargo Yard reduces the speed at which the Makers are able to offload cargo. Their ability to support Vlad's ambitions on the First Plateau has been reduced to practically nothing for at least a year.
The characters return briefly to Couluk's village, then head towards the Skin Adapoi settlement and then Hegger. Fifteen days later, the characters have reached the gates of the city of Hegger. They give over their two Maker prisoners to the Escritor of Justice in Three Stones Ford for a 600 challock reward. The characters tell the Escritor that the Maker supply line has been cut, and will be constricted for about a year, owing to the train crash.
Each character gained four experience points. ÿ