Session 17 - Alterna Methods of Transportation

Previously, across the Horizon… The ruins of the once-great capital of the Alternan Empire hold incredible wonders. Strange, potentially living forests. Crystalline substances sparkling inside of bottles. Birds of a lightning disposition, flocking together. Holes filled to the brim with adventure. And, apparently, very angry… reporters? A chance encounter with Biggs, Wedge, and Arbiters of Truth reporter Jessie Coates mostly served to spark a shouting match between Wedge and Yves about the proper care and maintenance of trees. Jessie shouted them both down, and then spent some more time shouting at everyone else, in between getting dates and places of birth. Jessie mentioned that Alterna was significantly safer and saner than normal, alleging that this was because someone brought a level of peace to Alterna. With a final word to Orrey about his father, Jessie led her fellow Arbiters away into the heart of Alterna, promising to “bring the word,” though what word, and to where, she didn’t say. Or if she did, no one but Isa seemed to really be following. It has been a mere twenty minutes since Jessie left, with Linnet fluttering about the castle, Isa and Bast scouting for any potential dangers around the edges, Orrey sketching, Cassiat shadowing Isa, and Yves still considering arboreal retribution. We join our heroes as the scouting run completes, bringing the six of them together outside of the castle’s main entrance, The Truth apparently just inside…
Cassiat bounces up and down, holding the extendable staff that she’s already accidentally extended twice since arriving here. “Is it clear? Are we going inside? Are we exploring?” Her enthusiasm for hidden mysteries appears to be winning out over her earlier bout of melancholy.
Yves is still muttering about… trees? Crop rotation? Masks? It’s not really clear.
Cassiat has known Yves for about 36 hours and has gotten used to that sort of thing remarkably quickly.
“Let me finish up those sketches that reporter wants…” Orrey trails off, hard at work.
“Doesn’t look like anything is about to pounce or cave in on us. Linnet, you still have that key?” Bast asks.
Linnet has been hanging upside down for a while and looks a little disoriented, but she pats her shirt and nods confirmation. “Yep, still got the key.” (She’s halfway convinced there’s a secret message hidden somewhere in the stained glass, and it wasn’t coming together right side up.)
The door to the castle itself is partially open — large and wooden, the right door of the set of two pulled out about two feet.
Isa is quietly giving notes to Cassiat, pointing out vectors ripe for ambushes, defensible fall-backs, that sort of thing.
Yves leaves off the tree grumble to ask no one in particular, “What are the chances that if we walk in there, someone is either going to ask us for help, give us a mask, or yell at us for being here?”
Cassiat is occasionally taking notes, all attention, the eagerness of youth plain on her face.
Linnet spins herself back upright and accidentally whacks the door with her braid in the process. “Well, Yves, only one way to find out.”
Bast quietly pads off to look for unfriendly greeting committees.
Orrey looks thoughtfully at Yves, tapping his pencil on his pad. “I’m pretty sure since all of those already happened, the chances are low.”
“Or it could mean that those things happen /frequently/ around here. Just saying.”
“We’ll have to track the occurrences. And check historical records. I do hope we find some historical records in here somewhere! And then we can apply your science to history and WHAM! We’ve got a paper we can coauthor.” Orrey grins at Yves.
“While Orrey works on his dissertation, Isa and I will secure the entryway,” Cassiat says, graduating herself to Co-Fighter.
Bast comes back. “No one here now, but someone was definitely poking around in the last day or two, before the reporters came by.”
“Any idea who?” Orrey asks.
“Too far back to be Seventh Dawn, unless they’re frequent visitors,” Isa says.
Yves cracks a smile. “A paper written on this place might end up being one no one can quite see straight when they try to read it, anyway.”
“No idea, but several of them, not bothering to hide their tracks. Looks like they were mostly checking out buildings around the castle,” Bast says.
“Might be treasure hunters, then. Bloody grave robbers. No better than scavengers,” Orrey grumbles.
Linnet thinks. “…what’s the difference, really?”
“Funding,” Yves tells Linnet.
“Then again, an archaeological team might not bother to cover their tracks as well,” Orrey continues, mostly to himself.
While the discussion continues, Bast slips inside the doors, keeping an eye out for more thunderbirds or reporters or any other eldritch monstrosities this land has in store.
No eldritch monstrosities await Bast inside. Just architectural monstrosities. The interior of the castle mostly shows what once was.
Linnet follows Bast as soon as she hears a lack of screaming and continues her task of staring at the ceiling in wide-eyed confusion.
Orrey hurries after everyone, ready to record the inside of the castle for posterity.
At one time, the walls were lined with paintings, from the markings, from the shadows, from the tiny plaques. Now, they hold nothing but years of accumulated dust. At one time, tapestries wound round the massive marble columns stretching up to the relief painted in the ceiling, the artistic scene incorporated the receding tiers. Now, scraps of shredded cloth are stuck in cracks forty feet off the ground, the paint of the relief chipped and faded due to years of neglect. At one time, an Empress sat on a throne at the top of the small, wide staircase, her rule extending out through all of the known world. Now, only a small dining room chair remains, the original throne long gone, the replacement perhaps some sort of needling joke. At one time, the massive golden pedestal behind the throne’s intended place must have held the Great Crystal — did it float? were there supports, golden wires perhaps, now destroyed or stolen? — but now, a small raised platform in the center is all that remains, marked with countless nicks, demarcations, scorches, and other signs of damage, intentional and unintentional both. After a moment of observation, another thing becomes clear; there are no doors, stairs, or hallways leading out of this central room. This is all there is.
Yves follows Orrey inside, and stops a few steps in. “…so, probably not archeologists.”
“Picked clean,” Isa observes helpfully.
“Not much of a castle,” Linnet comments doubtfully.
“Well, that’s something to see. But not for long. Shall we be going?” Orrey says.
Linnet observes the room for the best place high on the walls to start poking.
Bast wanders over to the platform, fingers tracing over the damage.
Yves follows Bast a ways, but then goes to the chair, and prods it dubiously. “…this reminds me how long it’s been since I ate.”
“Yves, what about a chair reminds you of dinner?” Linnet pulls out another somewhat squashed cinnamon bun from her bag and offers it to the gloombun. Then she hovers over the crystal platform, looking for wherever supports might have hung.
Yves accepts the bun without question, and has a bite. “I mean, it’s a chair that belongs at a table, isn’t it? It’s not even an armchair, it’s a ‘We pulled out something from a desk because we have a guest over for dinner’ chair.”
The platform’s damage is tiered, layered by age. The most recent damage is a series of slashes, stabs, dents, gouges, and similar signs of failed forced entry. Older than that, scored by the recent entries, is a layer of ground-in grit and sand, plus bits of char. “Where would the table and the rest of the chairs be, then? Dining chairs generally don’t come as singles,” Linnet says.
If there were supports that were on the pedestal, Linnet cannot quite find them.
Orrey reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dinner roll.
Isa reaches over to smack the roll out of Orrey’s hand. “No!”
“OW WHAT THE WHAT.”
Yves looks over at Isa and Orrey, holding his cinnamon bun. “…should we… not eat now?”
Cassiat jumps at Isa’s sudden shout.
“I mean, the cinnamon rolls might be a bit stale by now, but they came from the train station, so they’re probably still fine,” Linnet says.
Isa scowls. “Cinnamon rolls, fine. Weirdly fresh rolls from a collapsed temple? No.”
“I was just checking to see if anything weird had happened to it outside of the tower! I wasn’t going to eat it.”
Cassiat is gobsmacked. “Did you actually take some of those?!”
“I. Don’t. Believe. You.” Isa’s voice lowers with every word.
“Wait, you found fresh food and we’re thinking ‘weird magic’ rather than ‘archeologists having dinner’?” Yves says.
The roll on the floor, previously in Orrey’s hand, previously in an Adventure Hole, is the sweetest-smelling roll anyone has ever seen, the right level of flakiness in its golden-brown crust.
“Well, Orrey, I’m certainly not going to talk you out of trying it,” Linnet says dubiously.
Orrey nods. “It was in the room dedicated to Yinha, Goddess of the Harvest.”
“Okay, so it’s blessing food. Makes sense!”
“…huh.” Yves nibbles on his cinnamon bun. “Well, if you’re hungry, maybe try this before eating blessed mystery food.”
Orrey looks at Isa suspiciously. “Are you going to smack me again if I pick it up and put it back in my pocket? Because that is the height of rudeness. I mean, really.”
“Look, Isa, how much trouble would a harvest goddess get you into, anyway?” Linnet points out.
The chair — dark wood, simple, looks handmade but by someone who knows what they’re doing — has not responded in a suspicious manner to Yves’s prods.
Orrey shrugs at Linnet. “There ARE a lot of stories about magical food getting people into trouble.”
Isa sighs. “I don’t know, Linnet. That’s the point. None of us know anything about this place and you’re all poking and prodding and picking up food and it’s impossible to keep you all moving in one direction at the best of times. It’s like you’re trying to get yourselves killed.”
Yves sits down in the Inert Dining Chair to keep eating. “I’m not prodding anything,” he protests. “I’m being careful.”
“Remember the Twins of Rinla? They fell asleep for 30 years after eating the enchanted blueberry pie,” Orrey fills in.
“Isa, where I come from, we call that ‘research.’ Just sayin’,” Linnet says.
From Yves’s seat in the Not-Empress’s-Throne, he can see that Cinnabar, sparkle of emerald joy that she is, has not entered the castle. She sits outside the door, peering in, ears flattened.
Isa shakes her head. “You don’t come from here.”
Yves stands back up, to walk toward the door. “Hey, Cinny,” he calls, “what’s the matter?”
“Cinnabun? Uh-oh.” Linnet rises up toward the ceiling, looking up and spinning around to check all sides for potential hazards.
Orrey looks over at Cinnbunnatus and frowns. “That can’t be good. Are we done in here? I think maybe we should get out of here…” Orrey grabs the dinner roll and starts moving towards the door.
The rabbit generally looks ill at ease, a hopeful perk of her ears as Yves approaches.
Bast eyes the rabbit warily and begins to pull parts of what looks like a small machine out of his pockets, assembling them in a practiced fashion.
“Don’t worry,” Yves tells the rabbit, “it’s just the remains of the seat of power of a fallen world-spanning empire that was destroyed under wow when I put it that way, on second thought, yeah, let’s maybe not hang around in here.”
“But we haven’t figured out why it feels ominous. Yves, maybe there’s a mask in here somewhere,” Linnet says, already starting to look.
Cassiat walks toward the door, a little dubiously. “It’s just a weird rabbit that apparently you found somewhere? Also, didn’t you need something from here?”
“Hey, this weird rabbit led me into a forest of weird trees that didn’t murder me at all, and gave me a mask,” Yves says indignantly. “Respect the rabbit.”
“We need to find the tomb of Relis Laurent, Cassiat, and I don’t think this is it,” Isa says.
“Did you see anything ominously tomb-looking on the way in? There might be a secret door.” Linnet is still investigating.
The finally assembled machine appears to be a crossbow. Bast gives the scarred pedestal another glance. “I wonder what the people hacking away at it were trying to accomplish.”
Orrey heads out the door past Yves and Cinn, hovering nearby, but no longer wanting anything to do with that cursed chamber…for the moment.
Lacking any bricks that move when poked or ominous scratched signs on the walls, Linnet descends to observe the crystal and its pedestal. “Bast, got any way to boost this thing up a bit?”
Yves crouches down in front of the aforementioned weird rabbit, still in the palace but by the door now. “Does it smell funny? Is it full of monsters? Are you hungry? Were you traumatized here in a past life?”
The little hop Cinnabar gives Yves would seem to indicate one of those was right, but which…
“Feed the bunny the roll and see what happens?” Linnet tries.
Outside, Orrey can feel the eerie calm that has settled over the area. That sense of potential energy that was present around the ship is no longer in the air. It feels abandoned, but not dangerous. Not like before.
Orrey will look around for any building he recognizes from his historical research.
Yves offers the bun a fragment of cinnamon roll. “Okay. Let’s go from the top. One hop for ‘yes’, two hops for ‘no’. Hungry?”
Bast looks up at Linnet from the stubby, much-abused platform on top of the pedestal. “Research, hm? You might want to move back, just in case.”
Linnet obeys and zooms up to the top of one of the previously tapestried columns.
Cinnabar leans in and good-naturedly takes a bite of cinnamon roll, ignoring the first sentence entirely.
“Guess he was just snacky,” Yves says, feeding more bits of cinnamon roll to his bunny in complete innocence of anything that might be happening behind his back right now.
Bast takes a couple of steps back, fishes a red crystal out of his pocket, and gently lobs it onto the platform.
The crystal lands on the platform, bounces twice, and— —shatters.
A blast of fresh air and rolling fields whips through the castle, all of a sudden. —and then is gone.
The raised center of the pedestal shifts with a grinding of unseen gears, dropping level with the rest.
And then THAT drops.
And then THAT drops again, spiraling down into a set of golden stairs descending below the throne room, and then something else rises UP—
“I’m feeling very validated right about now! Thank you, Bast!” calls Linnet from the ceiling.
Yves turns around at all those grinding sounds. “….orrrr maybe she was thinking of that.”
Orrey looks in past him.
Isa draws her sword. “This is exactly what I was talking about,” she mutters.
Shadowy tendrils snake up from the revealed ground, slithering and sliding along the ground until they separate, spiraling up and coalescing into four separate forms, a wave of static passing through them to flicker into a semblance of armor on one, the suggestion of a peaked hat and whipping long robes on a second, black and white inconsistent triangles on a robe of a third, and a nervous series of motions on the fourth, bits whipping out and back until the figure slips more into a humanoid semblance of an unarmed fighter.
And then all four figures go right for Bast.
“Motherf-!” Bast tries to jump out of the way, aiming temporarily abandoned.
As soon as there’s something solid enough to qualify as “target”, Isa is on the move. “Watch out for surprises!” she yells to Cassiat as she runs, sword held angled back behind her. When she comes to the armored shadow she plants her leading foot, letting her inertia carry her sword and her body around in a rising slash.
The sword slices through the shadowy figure, catching something underneath enough to return a satisfying resistance.
Orrey looks in horror at the WEIRD happening in there, and goes with his previous plan of battle. He pulls out his stopwatch and hastily dials the hands around the face, focusing on projecting the purple clock in his mind onto the ground around Isa. The purple clock projection spins upwards perpendicular to the floor, and the hands start rapidly spinning in a clockwise direction. (Haste on Isa). Then he ducks to the side of the door and looks around outside to be sure there aren’t any other enemies coming up behind everyone.
Yves bounces to his feet, cinnamon roll dropping to the floor, and uses sticky fingers to flick a crackling shape of energy into existence, then fling it at… motion, sure, let’s hit the speedy types.
Scrambling away, Bast manages to roll a grenade toward the robed and triangled figures approaching him, then continues to put additional distance between them and himself.
Nobody appears to need healing yet, so Linnet flings a handful of ice at the pointy-hatted weirdo and gears up to heal whatever damage these guys do to Bast.
It is most certainly damage they intend to do to Bast — the armored shadow moves in, rippling darkness coalescing into a sword that slashes down toward the backpedaling moogle, as the flickering fast shadow peppers the around Bast with a flurry of punches and kicks — presumably, at least. The pointy-hatted darkness stops atop the pedestal, hand raised to the heavens, a crackle of energy starting to form around them, with a flickering beehived barrier forming around them, from the triangular’s Protect spell.
Outside of the castle, Cinnabar makes a decision.
Cinnabar is going in.
The rabbit suddenly charges in, bounding as fast as its sparkling legs can carry it, sprinting past Orrey and Yves to dart around Isa, behind Bast, and wall-jump off of the closest column to Linnet, its eyes wide with fear, its ruby glimmering with Determination. Cinnabar completes the mad dash back outside, past Isa one last time, as the Cardian fighter readies her next move.
“Go Cinnabun!” Linnet yells from up above. “Let’s make her proud, people!”
Isa starts to blur around the edges as Orrey’s spell takes hold. She sidesteps and grabs the armored shadow’s sword arm, squeezing and wrenching it in directions joints can’t easily cope with. With arm and sword twisted clear, her other hand brings her sword down in an overhead chop, before she lets go and brings her guard back up.
Shadow is splashed across the columns as Isa forces her way into the melee alongside Bast. The armored shadowy figure remains up, but considerably lighter.
Less off-balance now that he has managed to dodge their initial rush, Bast sizes up the opponents and arcs a grenade high to land between the armored and speedy shadows.
More shadow erupts from the detonation.
“You stay away from our rabbit! And our moogle! And, I mean, I guess our human can take care of herself!” Yves shouts at the shadows, shape-and-flicking another zap at the same target as before.
The lightning bolt takes the top half of the shadow off, along with a chunk of the distant column.
“Note to all, target the support caster first,” Linnet calls, suiting the word to the action with a barrage of icicles.
The Blizzard spell chills the air around the triangular mage, frozen shrapnel following shortly thereafter.
Orrey glances back in, seeing that nothing good is happening, and aims his time manipulation at Bast next. The projection glows slightly darker purple as he directs the clock to rapidly rotate around his moogle friend. (Haste on Bast)
The shadows, down one of their number, shift tactics, moving as if one singular entity. The armored KT spins a blur of darkness, a healing aura surrounding the hatted BW. A transparent circle then surrounds BW as well, a Shell protecting the boiling font of magical energy as the spell builds.
Isa shoves the armored shadow back with a shoulder, giving her enough room to get two hands on her sword for a pair of sweeping cuts across the midsection. The first one digs in, and the second one cuts clean through, sending wisps of shadow evaporating into the air.
Bast grins delightedly, muttering something that sounds like “Ohsothatswhatthatslikefromtheotherend” to everyone but Isa, and sends two grenades off to the armored shadow and its overprotected friend.
When the smoke from the explosions clear, there is but one shadowy figure remaining — the pointy-hatted BW, its form breaking apart from the sheer damage, magical energy roaring around it, lashing out against the interior of its protective spells.
Yves glares at those protective spells, and sends more lightning crackling that way regardless, with a pointed, well, point of one finger.
Only a sliver of lightning sneaks through the spell, the fires burning within threatening to burst free.
Bast takes one look at that and ducks behind the most convenient nearby piece of stone, peering around it to aim his crossbow.
Linnet backs as far away from the roiling ball of spells as she can get, preparing to bust out the healing if and when the pointy-hatted mage explodes.
Orrey sees that only one enemy remains standing, and is guarded against everyone…but not against TIME! He reverses the clock in his hands as he launches his clock aura over the pointy hatted one. (Slow on BW)
The shadowy wizard casts Flare on Bast.
Bast flinches, reflexively raising a hand to protect himself.
A shining pearl light flashes in front of Bast’s hand, forming a curved shield that catches the incoming boiling mass of fire, and pings the Flare spell right back where it came.
The shadowy figure’s own Flare spell bounces back, and explodes.
Yves flinches back from the glare of the explosion. And then applauds the good work.
The shadows dissipate.
The floor has a few new marks on it from a series of explosions and melting ice shards, and it’s a good deal lower, underneath where the Great Crystal used to reside, leading down into… whatever awaits below.
“…so is research normally like this?”
“Is it over?!” Orrey tries to catch his breath. “Everybody ok?”
Isa lowers her arm from where it was protecting her face, looking around. “if it is, maybe Linnet’s school and mine weren’t that different. We’re good up here.”
“Interesting research is rare and should be treasured. Everyone okay?”
“Everything still attached.” Bast comes out from behind the column he was using for cover.
Cassiat, not too clever by half, has been hunkered down behind one of the columns.
“Anyone who objects to me leading the way down, you have 2.6 seconds to say so,” Linnet says, already at the stairs.
Bast unloads his crossbow. “Lead on, fearless research assistant.”
Isa is still under the lingering effects of the haste spell, and quickly says “Stay behind me.”
Orrey pulls out his sketchbook and attempts to draw a freeze frame of the battle as he slowly joins the group.
Yves pats the rabbit hastily, ending up with fur on his sticky fingers, and then hurries after the others.
Bast spares a smile for the rabbit, checking to see if it decides to join the party.
“Aw, fine. I’ll take second,” Linnet pouts.
“Fair enough,” Isa allows, and starts down the stairs.
Cinnabar waits until almost everyone is down the stairs, and then sprints in after them, not wanting to be left behind, but clearly not wanting to be in.
“Cinnabun! The hero of the hour!” Linnet scoops up the bunny and scritches her around the gem.
The golden stairs lead down for at least five stories, the metal slowly giving way to carved stone. Dust lies thick on the ground until trod into the air, causing a few rather adorable sneezes from Cinnabar.
“Starting to look more tomblike, at least. But a lot less likely to contain an airship,” Isa remarks.
And then the stairs come to an end, opening up into a wide, dark room.
Orrey checks in on Cassiat as they walk down the stairs. “Exciting or terrifying or sort of a weird combination of the two? I think I’m the mixture.”
And as Linnet steps off of the last stair, that room starts to light up.
Linnet puts a hand to the front of her tunic, checking for any vibrations or heat or anything weird from the key.
Stone torches lining the walls flicker to life, blue-white flame sending sparks up, lighting in pairs. The lights extend out ten feet apart to each side, curving out at a hundred feet wide, other torches sparking up in the ceiling, casting the whole chamber in that same crystal-blue light. The light falls on something very large in the center of the chamber. The very bottom of it hovers perhaps a foot off the ground, swaying side to side slightly. The bottom forms a large orb at the back, a gleaming silver metal sloping forward to a series of support struts connecting to a smaller orb at the bow, the top of the orbs turning into the full body of the ship, a deck at the bow, the stern holding the bridge and more expansive chambers, turbines on the back glowing with a new crystalline-blue energy as they start to spin up.
Isa lowers her sword, craning her neck to take it all in. “I am not too proud to admit when I am wrong.”
Linnet fishes the key out of her shirt. It’s humming and glowing right along with the ship.
Yves’ ears shiver. “…I think I’m in love.”
“Uh-huh,” Isa agrees.
Orrey does his usual thing, taking up multiple pages to get a good picture of the airship.
“Well, Orrey, I believe this was entrusted to you. Care to do the honors?” Linnet looks around. “…also, where would this thing theoretically exit this chamber?”
He shakes his head. “Yeah, sure, airship. You’re willing to jump on a random airship that some insane dude on a random train tried to give to me, but you won’t let people eat one Yinha blessed roll?”
Bast turns around, briefly walking backwards, and points at Yves. “You’re not fixing anything on it until we know how everything works. And I sign off on it.”
“Got it in one,” Isa says, and starts looking for some means of ingress.
“I’m all for you eating the roll! Fine. Let’s make some salad.” Linnet approaches the airship somewhat warily, having no real idea where there’d be someplace to put a key – except “maybe at the front.”
“Fix it?” Yves looks indignant. “It looks /perfect/. I wouldn’t dream of trying to improve something like this.” He crouches down next to the rabbit. “Yes, Cinny, it’s absolutely /beautiful/, isn’t it? You agree with me, don’t you?”
Orrey shakes his head. “I’m still thinking this airship is a potential death trap. You go ahead and explore that one without me. I’ll stick to the ground until you prove it’s safe.”
“Fair enough. Cassiat, keep an eye on your brother until we give the all-clear.”
As the group approaches the ship, two things happen.
One, an outline of a door glows gold near the bow, and then irises open, a walkway extending down, railing and steps forming out of each other until they slot perfectly on the ground.
Two, with a tremendous grinding boom, the wall the bow is pointed to starts to slide apart, revealing a waterfall on the other side, pouring down to obfuscate any secret entrances.
“Well, that’s that question answered,” Linnet says.
Cinnabar sits down on the ground next to Orrey as he sketches, the little rabbit’s eyes full of wonder, sorrow, and longing.
And as the exploration begins… End session.