Eyes Unclouded - Sessions 32 & 33
Two more brief session reports from our ongoing Studio Ghibli-inspired Cairn game. I have the utmost faith that my schedule will someday settle into a regular cadence of reports again.
Session 32: The Streets of Mal-Aqat
We rejoined the party as they prepared to explore the lower levels of the ruins of Mal-Aqat in search of a dragon's lair. They were:
- Ambrose, mountebank and would-be inanimate object
- Sir Percius, law-abiding knight
- Flame, tiny fire elemental in an automaton body
- September, a flying squirrel druid and practicing violinist
- Leder, a bonekeeper and reformed necromancer
And they were accompanied by:
- Ismene, botanist and wizard of the Verdurous Court
- Merlina the Crow, the Cat King's magical advisor
As lunch rolled around, the party found themselves short on rations. Ambrose negotiated a deal with Ham and Thorn, the giant treasure seeker(s), trading a hunk of pilfered silver for some preserved "bat" carcasses.
Sated, the party snuck off the giant(s)’ larder and onto a subterranean street. It curved gently out of sight in either direction to (presumably) form a ring, lit at regular intervals by low blue globes of light. The road was lined with empty display windows at ground level, then smaller arches that ascended five floors up to a vaulted ceiling. The ruins of bronze chandeliers dangled overhead.
Flame peered into a window and found the ruins of a public house, complete with jumbled furniture and scattered potsherds. The fire spirit guessed this was from the crash. Leder noted with curiosity the lack of any human remains.
"Bats"
Down the road to the left the party could dimly make out a wagon-like structure about a block away, so they decided to head in that direction. September flew ahead to scout, finding the enclosed cab of some sort of golem-vehicle hybrid. It had a huge face on the front and seemed to have once crawled on hundreds of small legs. It rustled slightly as the druid flew by.
September reported the news and the party decided to send Flame and Sir Percius ahead. Each was coated in armor and would pretend to be an automaton themselves.
This backfired as a stream of bat-like creatures emerged from the wrecked vehicle. They had leathery wings, tails with a sharp can-opener shaped hook, and they circled toward Flame and Sir Percius with a hunger.
Flame roared to life, burning brightly and sending the creatures scattering. They used the confusion to rush to the vehicle and hide inside. Soon the rest of the party caught up, but they could hear more such creatures flapping closer overhead.
One flew close enough for September to call to it. The druid could speak with animals and the bat was more than happy to chat. It landed on Ambrose's arm, introducing itself as Grub. A few quick questions revealed that the bats used scavenged metal to build nests and feed their young.
A Dragon
As the other bats grew closer, the party debated whether to rush forward, potentially into the lair of a dragon, or fall back. Either way, they would need a distraction. They turned to Ismene, who said she definitely had a spell that would help, but the party wouldn't like it. September told her to cast it. The mage set her staff aside and with a bellowing chant, conjured a Wall of Thorns that arched overhead. The nearest bats were instantly skewered.
A moment later, the echoing words of the spell combined and the screeching of the bats was drowned out as something bellowed in the deep.
With the way momentarily clear, the party fled back to Ham and Thorn.
Session 33: Back to the Celestial City
The party fell back all the way to the room with the writhing silver arch at the entrance to the Woods Inverted version of Mal-Aqat. In the process:
- They rejoined Madrigal, the halfling werebear and fungal forager and Nanaki, the spectral artificer.
- Leder was momentarily missing in action (their player being unavailable).
Ham and Thorn had decided to follow the party out for fear of the dragon. September suggested resetting the celestial city to seal the way behind them. The party agreed and hustled out onto the peaceful coast of the Woods Inverted.
The giant(s) were perplexed by this, but Flame and the others explained the Woods Inverted and the great spirits who lived within. Ham and Thorn decided they would go seek another route back to the material world and wished the party "good luck with all of that."
The "Sewer"
Returning once more into the ruins, the party immediately went to investigate the fifteen silver pillars that seemed to represent the structure's arrangement. This time a glyph that looked like an arch with a series of radiating waves underneath was connected to the entry. This was the space September had visited previously and they dubbed it the "sewer".
The party walked down the steps, emerging into the middle of a long corridor with a dry sluice running through its center. To their left they heard a wet sloshing. To their right, a distant hammering and the faint sound of vocals. They decided to head right first.
After about a hundred feet of corridor, they came to a large rectangular room. Four giant crucibles, all made of the same shell-like starstuff as the rest of the structure flanked the sluice, which entered the room and curved into another tunnel to the left. A balcony looked down on the scene from overhead.
September flew up to scout the balcony. Ambrose polymorphed into a belaying belt with a grappling hook attachment and a single human arm (their player had to leave early). Nanaki used the Ambrose-belt to scale up there as well. On the ledge, they found a plinth studded with four levers and two cabinets.
In one cabinet, the duo found a set of leather aprons, or rather inflexible starstuff hammered into the shape of leather aprons. Nanaki donned one as a mask, not really needing their eyes to see. In the other, they found fifteen silver bars neatly arrayed on shelves. Each was hammered with a symbol, in the same configuration as the pillars in the gate room. September cautioned not to touch these.
Wet Sounds
While they explored, Flame examined the lower floor. It seemed to have never been used, and the lack of any sources of heat for the crucibles suggested it couldn't be. The fire spirit noted that none of the celestial spaces ever looked like they had been inhabited.
Madrigal and Sir Percius went to check out the wet sounds from back the way they had come. As they advanced down the corridor, Madrigal's candle helmet lighting the way, they heard approaching footsteps. The duo drew their weapons, but were surprised as two mushroom creatures dashed into the light. Each looked like a large chicken-of-the-woods with two noodly legs underneath.
The creatures ran headlong into the party. Sir Percius checked one to the floor with his shield while Madrigal, a mushroom expert, sensed they were stressed and fleeing from something. The mushrooms picked themselves up and kept running. Madrigal followed suit while Sir Percius held his ground.
Nothing seemed to be following, but the sloshing grew louder and louder. A faint rippling was visible in the air. Sir Percius began to rush back, but he was too late - a cube of clear jelly enveloped him as he tried to duck away from the corridor's mouth.
The ooze was scalding to the touch. Instantly, September and Nanaki sprang into action. Nanaki readied their grappling hook, but September cast Dispel Magic.
Rainbow beams radiated across the ooze with no effect. They did, however, unmake Sir Percius's shortsword, Twice Flickering Flame. Then they lanced into the floor and the whole room began to unravel, revealing black void beyond.
Nanaki was ready with the grapnel, tossing it to Sir Percius who pulled himself free as the ooze fell. He pulled himself onto the ground even as it began to buckle and peel away.
Fleeing Deeper
Cut off from the entrance by a widening abyss, the party saw little choice but to follow the mushrooms deeper into the complex. They dropped down from the high balcony and dashed into the unexplored corridor. It sloped upwards before arriving at another T-junction.
Madrigal was able to track the mushroom's wet footsteps to the right, so the party surged that way, quickly coming to a barred archway. They could hear the tunnel crumbling behind them.
Nanaki, September, and Flame (abandoning their automaton) slipped through the bars and disappeared into another space entirely.
On the far side was a small circular room dominated by a huge automaton. The starstuff construct was a huge torso mounted on a columnar base. Its bearded mouth was open, bellowing a low and rumbling song. In front of it was an anvil and to the right, heaps of stacked ingots. A shaft on the opposite side of the room dropped out of sight.
September and Flame ducked back through the door they had entered by, emerging into the hall where the others waited nervously. Flame resumed control of the automaton. Together, the fire spirit and Sir Percius tried to bend the bars to let the bulkier party members through, but to no avail.
Merlina stepped up to try something. She cast Force Disk, conjuring a flickering blue coin vertically between the bars. Then, with visible exertion, she began to turn. The bars buckled, then shattered. Pearly shards ricocheted around the space, injuring the crow wizard and Ismene and flicking off the rest of the party's armor. Madrigal narrowly avoided a mortal wound and learned something in the process (our first scar!).
The party rushed through the door in the nick of time. Nanaki, meanwhile, had been studying the automaton as it worked a stack of starstuff ingots. It sang and hammered, forging a halberd head. The spirit noted that the automaton had a ribbon of instructions dangling from the back of its neck like some of the constructs they had seen before.
GM Notes
This was a wild pair of sessions! Without much discussion, the party has made a series of major decisions which will have huge impacts on both their lives and the region writ large. I can't wait for them to discover how.
Session 32 saw the implementation of a 20 notch countdown. Whenever the party made a significant amount of noise, I rolled a d6 and subtracted the result from the clock. At 0 or lower, the dragon would wake up. The party got a bit unlucky with random encounters, but it didn't help that they consistently chose noisy responses to their present situation.
I'm sad to see Ham and Thorn go, but they wouldn't go back into that much danger and I don't want to manage any more NPCs anyway.
I didn't know what to review for Session 33. I figured either they would turn to deal with the dragon (and potentially rescue Sir Egerain) or flee back to the outside world. I did not bank on them immediately returning to adventuring in the ruins.
It hasn't fully survived into these session reports, but September testing the limits of Dispel Magic has been a persistent theme / running gag for this game. They were warned by Aviquin that casting the spell would have dire consequences, and it finally did.
I was a touch worried that this would be a TPK or near to it. The void here is a serious, serious danger. If the central puzzle had not been laid out favorably or if the party had gone left instead of right, they might have been finished. It certainly would have been a sudden end to 30+ sessions of story arc.