Mediums and Messages

The Electrum Archive - Session 5

Plate from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry. 1908.

This post continues my account of the micro-campaign of The Electrum Archive I'm running. As ever I'll strive to keep the report spoiler-free for players while still including my impressions as a GM and critical notes for next time. I went in thinking this could be the last session, but no! One more to go!

The Chase Continues

This week, our party consists of:

When last we left the party, Et had suddenly lurched to something resembling life. In his new form he was unable to heal naturally (only recovering the 1d6 from medical attention on a short rest, not the baseline 2) but didn't need to eat, drink, or potentially breathe.

The party decided not to risk climbing the deadly stone column a second time. They set out in pursuit of the cloaked strangers who had received Bisir's hidden message at Bar Morvyn.

With the Sparrowhawk, they were easily able to make up the lost time, coasting slowly about a mile behind their quarry. As they travelled, the party honed their skills. Dunda investigated the carrion ray and figured out how to synthesize its venom. Gun tried and failed to solve the puzzle cube they had looted from the tomb at Whistling Rock. Et tested out the limits of his new undeath, finding he could separate from his physical senses and see into the spirit realm, albeit dimly.

Around midday, the trail led the party through a strange desert pocked with silvery metal pipes. They seemed to be Elder construction, pitted and sometimes buried under dunes. The pipes spread out for miles in grid pattern along the highest ridge of the area. Some expelled air, some sucked it in, but in both cases it was enough to be faintly audible at all times.

Catching Up

Just before nightfall, the three cloaked figures arrived at the foot of the Elder aqueducts, right where the arches disappeared into the stone of the highest mesa in the area. They stopped and dismounted from their striders. The party briefly discussed attempting to sneak up on them on foot, but figured by the time they arrived they would either have left or done what they had come to do.

Instead, the party unfurled the Sparrowhawk's sail and leapt across the sand to catch up, stopping within shouting distance. As the party approached, the cloaked figures took cover behind sand dunes or pressed themselves behind the aqueduct arch.

Et tried to hail them, saying they saw travelers and wondering what brought them this way. The leader of the three called back that they were just archaeologists and told the party to move along. Et tried to say they were archaeologists too, but the leader told him to get lost "before things get bloody."

Around this time, Dunda had loaded the Sparrowhawk's newly repaired ballista. He fired a bolt at the group's spokesperson. It deflected slightly off an intervening dune but still punched into the man's chest. The wound would have been fatal, were it not for a chitin breastplate now visible under his torn cloak.

Close Combat

Dunda leapt into action, charging the remaining distance and stabbing at the enemy's leader with his spear. His foe proved to be an adept combatant though, parrying the blow with his needle-like shortsword and delivering a counter jab that sent Dunda reeling. He was quickly backed up by one of the other cloaked figures, a big fellow with another shortsword. It was taking all of Dunda's grit (fictional and mechanical) just to hold them off.

Et peppered the enemy with arrows and one enemy with a crossbow peppered back. Neither scored a significant hit until Gun cast Controlling Charm, using his staff to enchant a nearby dune, turning into a stinging wave that blinded the enemy crossbow-woman. As she coughed up a lungful of sand, Et finished her off with a volley of arrows.

Dunda took another jab at the leader, who slapped his spear aside again. This provided just enough time for Gun to rush forward and clobber the man with his staff.

The party seemed to be winning! Then the remaining enemy stepped forward and stabbed Dunda in the eye. He dropped to the ground, mortally wounded.

As the rest of the party rushed to Dunda's aid the sole surviving enemy disengaged, climbing a rope ladder previously obscured on the far side of the aqueduct's foot.

Taking a Break

Fortunately, Et proved a capable medic. He used Dunda's healing kit to treat the worst of the pit fighter's wounds. He'd lost the eye, but otherwise he soon recovered.

The party took a quick break to eat, catch a breath, and patch themselves up. Gun cast two more Controlling Charms, this time to command wounds to stitch themselves and bringing everyone back to something like fighting trim.

The party checked the two bodies. Their equipment was of superlative make - freshly stamped house guard gear rather than the salvaged and repeatedly resharpened stuff most ink seekers used. The leader's cuirass was ruined, but Dunda equipped the crossbow-woman's. It was made of a light but durable chitin laminate, like the molded armor of the Bar Morvyn guards, but dark green. The party also recovered the enemy's three striders as well as their saddlebags, finding only rations within.

Into the Mountain

Finally, the party decided to give chase. They climbed up to the top of the aqueduct using the silk rope ladder left by the combatant who had escaped. They found themselves on a narrow metal platform, about three feet in width that ran along the side of a roughly five foot trough of mercury. The mercury seemed to be slowly settling, rather than pumping or flowing.

Looking down the aqueduct towards the mountain, the party found a tunnel mouth. The edges of the tunnel seemed like they had been melted into a perfect arch, rather than cut or chiseled. Dunda lit a torch and the party continued inside.

After about 20 feet of corridor, the party found themselves in a rectangular room, bisected north to south by the trough of mercury. On the north wall, the tunnel didn't continue, leading the party to suspect the liquid continued through a less accessible pipe. On the east and west were metal doors - more like shutters with gripped handles along the bottom instead of a latch or knob.

The room's contents were more puzzling - two kidney bean shaped vessels the size of a small coach, a set of metal lockers, and a strange faux wood desk.

Et and Gun checked the vessels. They had faucets built into them that dispensed small amounts of liquid. One contained some kind of ammoniac solution; the other, high purity alcohol. Gun theorized that these might be components of some kind of explosive when combined with the mercury. They further theorized that since the mercury's arrival hadn't left a magical trace (according to Varta back in Session 3), this was a lot of work to go through just to blow up Bar Morvyn. Anyone who could make this much material appear could arrange for the seven inhabitants of that tower to be killed by some simpler method. This mercury had to have already been here and must be for some bigger purpose.

Checking the lockers, Dunda found sets of ancient Elder protective dress: grey worksuits of some unknown synthetic material, yellow chitinous helmets, and rubber gloves.

Dunda and Et listened at the doors. To the east, nothing more than a drip. To the west, the sound of muted voices, perhaps far away or muffled.

Finally, Gun investigated the desk. The top was studded with small spray nozzles in a row along the far side. In the middle were two depressions. Each depression contained 20 drops worth of ink. Et was able to use his spirit vision to see lines of ink circuitry just below the desk's surface.

When Gun reached to recover the ink, it reached back, forming fingerlike tendrils. He tinkered with it through gloves for a bit, but eventually decided to try making proper contact with the ink fingers. As soon as he did, it impaled one of his digits and a screen of mist sprayed from the nozzles, displaying runes and sigils.

Miraculously, Gun could make out their rough meaning. The display gave throughput data for a pump system. In the corner, red sigils marked a "critical breach." By flexing and rotating his hand in that direction, Gun could rotate a volumetric form inside the display that had different screens on each face.

By rotating towards the alert, the party found a screen with a diagram. In the middle were two circles: one marked "activated" and one marked "water." The two circles were connected by a line, then the water circle had a line emerging from the bottom. This line in turn was cut by a red slash and a blinking "critical breach" error message. The whole diagram was labeled "Reservoir 2."

Gun checked the other rotational angles and found two more screens. One offered settings like screen brightness. Another seemed to be ancient Elder solitaire.

Satisfied, the party prepared to venture towards the voices...

GM Notes

I honestly thought this might be our last session, but I underestimated on two key accounts: combat and the sheer allure of investigating an alien computer.

Regarding combat, this was our first that lasted more than a single round and it was just as deadly as I expected from Into the Odd style automatic damage. I was concerned when the party decided to just go match off with three able fighters with no stratagem or scheme, but it all worked out fine-ish in the end. Worse comes to worst, we roll up new characters or just start there.

I am glad that Dunda got some time to shine. He soaked up a colossal amount of damage before getting dropped. I think it maybe felt a little underwhelming though (or at least that was my impression). Less flashy than casting a spell or doing a sneaky keyworded trick to just mitigate damage.

I cheekily gave the enemy leader a grit point to play with and it had just the desired effect of turning the fight into a desperate brawl.

As for the Elder stuff: I've found in past games that it can kind of be a drag to just describe 21st century objects through a weird lens. It's easier to just say "these are rubber dish gloves, but your character doesn't know that." What does seem to work is taking a normal piece of tech and making the interface method or form weird and horrifying. I didn't really expect the computer interaction to last quite as long as it did (the party showed an admirable degree of caution), but I think it was time well spent.

I've been accepting pretty liberal interpretations of Controlling Charm. It has clear limits that have developed through fiction (mostly in terms of range or the stopping power of the effect), but it has done everything from stitch wounds to blind folks to steer an arrow. I think if we had multiple warlocks I'd want to be a little more precise about what exactly the term "charm" suggests about the spell, but here it has worked out fine.