SESSION 02: The Vault
General Summary
The next morning, the party members discussed the implications of the worm-like mechana, while Darekov and his entourage were breaking camp and prepared the coach for them to depart.
Moe and Forge decided to dissect the small automatons to figure out more about their inner workings.
Eventually, after about 6 hours, the lot of them reached Cherry Song.
Darekov droped them off by the local tavern and inn, the Silver Tankard. He mentioned that in about five to six days, in the harbor about an hour away from Cherry Song, the ship to Aldarisia would arrive. He promised he would try to get them on board the ship free of charge. As to the matter of their reward for escorting and protecting his caravan, he told them he'd be back on the tavern in the afternoon to give them their full payment.
Darekov left, and the party went in the tavern where they ordered food and drinks and held a small celebratory feast of sorts. In the process they procured rumors of a party of adventurers that had come by less than a tenday ago, claiming they had discovered a
Vault near Cherry Song, and had hired some workers to assist them in clearing it out.
After their meal, Forge and Moe left the tavern to go the local blacksmith, with the intent of asking on whether or not they could rent a workbench and some tools to dissect the constructs. On their way to the blacksmith, they saw the local communal temple. This temple was shared by the priests of several different churches, specifcially of the gods:
Marduk, Tyr, the Dwamar, and Thyris. From the street, Forge and Moe noticed that workers were on the roof of the temple, installing an additional emblem; that of
Primus. From the street they could a see a wagon, and priests of Chronos carrying the emblem of their god and putting it on the wagon. Forge inferred that the priests of Primus replaced the priests of Chronos in the temple. Which was a bit odd, as Primus and Chronos are particularly close allies. However, Forge decided to give priority to their primary task and continued on towards the blacksmith.
The smith told them that they could rent a bench, and the duo thanked him and told him they'd be back later. Forge was thinking that perhaps instead of renting the tools, he could use his divine power to magically manifest a set. He just needed some gold from the rest of the party to complete a magical ritual.
On the way back to the tavern, they came upon the departing wagon of Chronos priests. Forge attempted to ask them what was wrong, and why were they leaving, but the priests were not very forthcoming, and not friendly for that matter. Perplexed by this interaction, he and Moe went by the temple where they met Jerakim Londus, the head-priest of Primus who was just installed in this temple.
Jerakim explained that while Chronos and Primus used to be allies, and their churches were said to be "in communion," this is no longer the case. The two churches are no longer in communion, and the political doctrine of the church of Primus is now to undermine Chronos. For their part, the church of Chronos seems to have ordered its priests to retreat from Primus' expansion. Jerakim hypothesized thay maybe they did this to avoid an escalation. He also added that he did not know if this paradigm shift was coming merely from the church hierarchy, or from Primus itself. He also mentioned that Chronos was not the only close ally of Primus that the Church had gotten... less than friendly with. The Church of the Guardian of Worlds was also handled in the same vein recently.
After that they exchanged priestly pleasantries and Forge and Moe departed, with Moe stating how fishy this whole deal smelled to her.
Back at the tavern, Haggard attempted to make friends with Janus, the tavern owner, to glean rumors and information about the adventurers and the vault they had heard earlier. And perhpaps if there were any reports about zombies like the ones they fought the day before.
Janus told them that a group of adventurers did come here about 6 days ago. They had heard reports of unidentified sightings and strange occurences in the famrs west of Cherry Song. In the process of investigating this, they vame upon the entrance to an ancient vault and so came to Cherry Song seeking to hire workers to help them enter and, essentially, pillage the vault. To that end the hired people from the Flintcloak company, which was owned by the dwarf Ardrak Flintcloak. He had very little extra to offer other than he had noticed that Ardrak seemed particularly stressed and worried these last couple of days.
Moe and Forge returned around that time, and the team exchanged the information they had gained. They decided to look into Ardrak, and to share in the costs for Forge's creation of the tools. Forge went in his room to channel his divine power, and Tamachi remained in the tavern hall in case Darevok came be to pay them. Thus, Moe and Haggard left to speak with Ardrak after asking Janus on where they could find the dwarf.
Armed with directions, the orc and the dwarf went by Ardrak's office where they found none other that Darekov conversing with Ardrak--apparently the two were friends. Upon seeing them, Darekov exclaimed "ah, we were just talking about you. I think I've found a job for you."
Ardrak explained his predicament. The first half of his story was a repeat of what Janus had said at the tavern about the adventurers and the vault. Ardrak explained, that his sister Dangrid was in charge of the group of workers that went with the adventurers to the vault. Ardrak was in contact with his sister thanks to a set of speaking stones. Her most recent message was five days ago, when Dangrid told him they had reached the vault's entrance, and the door to the vault was opened (the adventurers had said the door was closed, and one of the reasons they had come back to town, was to seek some means of opening it).
Since that message, Dangrid has not replied. Ardrak is fearful something must have happened to her, and wants to hire the adventurers to go to the vault and discover what fate befell her and, if possible, rescue her.
Moe and Haggard left to confer with their comrades, whereupon the group decided to take on the job. In the interest of not wasting time--both because time was of the essense if Dangrid and the rest were to be rescued, and because they'd prefer it if they could be back in time for the boat to Aldarisia--they decided to leave immediatly, borrow and wagon from Ardrak, and march towards the vault which was about a day and a half from Cherry Song (less with the wagon). Meanwhile, Forge had completed his channel divinity and had constructed the set of tools, while Moe used her own magic to infuse Haggard's shield and Tamachi's longbow with upgrades.
The group bought supplies and started their journey.
While on the road, Moe, with assistance from Forge, dissected and analyzed the "little worms," and deduced a great deal about their nature.
The design of the constructs was extremely sophisticated, and yet they were made by simple materials.
They run on
magicant, and like most such automatons, could continue to function for years on a simple magicant bead.
Their small teeth were designed to be used as weapons, but they weren't particularly lethal; however they compensated for that by having the ability to discharge lightning with their attacks. This electricity was also what they probably used when they fused with a corpse's nervous system to animate the zombies. There was nothing in their design to suggest "old fashioned" necromancy. Moe surmised that these "little worms" didn't have the ability to turn a living creature to such zombies, they could only animate corpses. Which meant that they had to either kill their target first, or simply find a corpse in the first place.
The constructs seemed to be capable of not only slithering quickly on the ground, but also capable of limited flight, wich would enable them to dart towards their target swiftly. They weren't particularly resilient to damage however, and Moe believed that destroying them shouldn't prove difficult.
Moe also tried to ascertain whether or not they could be remotely controlled, and figured out that though the constructs did function autonomously, they could in fact be controlled directly, or be sent directives from anywhere on the same plane of existence.
The next day, they arrived on the standing stones that Ardrak had told them was the sight to look for. From there, it was about an hour to the east for the cave that held the entrance to the vault. The group scouted the stones, and Tamachi felt that this place used to hold power of the primal spirits, but now it had been emptied by divine intervention. He had no idea what that could mean.
He didn't have time to really ponder this in any case, as he had spotted barefoot tracks in the fresh snow, leading eastwards. He could tell that some of the tracks belonged to humans, and some to dwarves--and they were most probably zombies.
Following the tracks for about an hour, the group located the entrace to the cave. There they could see two zombies and two of the small wormlike constructs. In addition there was a clockwork bronze scout.
Clockwork Bronze Scout
A fight ensued but the group prevailed, though the bronze scout did give them some trouble.
Because of that, they decided to have a short rest before moving ahead. Afterwards, Tamachi Jun scouted the entrance of the cave, and could see two worm constructs within.
The group entered the cave to discover that in total there were 5 such automatons, but they made short work on them.
At the end of the cave, they found the open entrance to the ancient vault. They entered and moved deeper inside the derelict facility until the reached a large room and were assailed by a couple of ancient
automatons.
An ancient automaton
The automatons proved stong adversaries, but the group did prevail, though their battles thus far had taken a heavy toll on them.
In the center of the chamber they were in, there was a glass-domed dais, prominently displaying the symbol of
Hoplon Industries, suggesting this vault was made by the ancient
grand guilds. Forge deduced this whole contruption was some sort of control interface--currently inactive.
At the front of the dais, was a pannel that seemed to be missing a magicant shard. Moe had ripped one ouf of one of the automatons earlier, and inserted it into the panel. The dais came to life, revealing that this was Vault 127.
Forge saw that next to the slot where the magicant shard was insterted, there was panel that had also come to live with a series of twelve buttons. Forge quickly deduced what the buttons did, and managed to navigate the interface's arcane menus. He was first greeted with an ominous message:
Getting passed that, the interface had various options divided in two categories: ACTION, and INQUIRE. Forge chose to peruse the INQUIRE options first where he saw that he was given the option to access information about the facility, a map of the facility, as well as the the vault's Logs. However, everytime he attempted to open any of the above, he was given the following:
Though none of them knew what sort of mechana exactly was a 'memory shard' they understood that information was stored in one. and--at least currently--it was beyond their reach. Thus, Forge focused on accessing the ACTION catergory of the interface.
Under that section, there were options like 'UNLOCK DOOR' and 'LOCK DOOR,' but the group jointly decided to avoid messing with those for the time being, in case they either release something nasty, or locking themselves inside the Vault. There was also a Diagnostics check, which Forge executed:
Forge had the Interface identify the invader admin account, and the only reply he got was a symbol:
It was the same symbol they had found embedded in the worm-like mechana.
At that juncture the party decided that they had to regain their strength if they were to continue, so they left the vault to rest, and planned to return a few hours later...
