S1 E30: The Pipeworks
General Summary
In which the gang meets the Countess, and finds a 1-sided portal to a murky domain...
- The gang accepts the thanks of the Countess and finds exquisite lodging at the Marleven Royal Arms as a reward for saving hundreds of lives, if not the whole city. After settling in to their personal suites, they follow the invite to meet Countess Marjoleine. A series of samlors, 3-wheeled pedaled rickshaws, carry them in pairs as a group through the crowded streets up to the Countess' reserve, a huge wooded private park at the highest tier of Mount Marleven.
- They catch the Countess in a huff over a recent conversation with her ex-husband, bur she quickly changes her tone and is delighted to see them. They dig in fairly deep for a discussion with the highest authority in the land, and candidly to talk about the problems with the creatures in the water supply, their connections to this conjunction, and her own perspective and suspicions about Kannet that seem to align and confirm their own.
- She seems impressed overall with them, and knows of their exploits back at the Keep. She pledges that they will be placed in control of the Keep if they can solve this conjunction problem permanently (or at least for another 3000 years, "at which point it's the god damned Elves' problem.")
- She awards them special brass badges of authority that have an immediate effect on the public works employees at the water pumping facility. They get a guide to take them down to level 3, the level where the intake pipes come into the structure. They fiddle around with one of the two main intake pipes and get inside, finding weird nautiloid snails and progressively weirder accretions on the insides of the pipes.
- Soon enough they come to the source of this - A seamless rift through which they find a 'magical' world of yuck, jello skeletons, etc. Perplexingly, it only exists when faced in one direction; turning around, they find themselves only in the normal pipe. But for the creatures, the opposite is true - the pipe exists for them only when facing towards the intake, otherwise they're in their own watery, Murky world.
- The fight with the jello skeletons - giant pink hulks of translucent flesh and throbbing organs - is perhaps harder than it would have otherwise been, as these creatures amplify and mirror psychic energy - a step up from the Grues and Manglers that just shrug off psychic energy. When Xi Shi lands a solid blow with the Mind Spear, it instead spears several members of the gang and does nothing to the pink hulks.
- Avoiding many of the forceful but mostly inaccurate blows from the creatures, the gang vanquishes them and is able to trivially close the gate from the other side, safely returning simply by turning around as the gate closed. On the chance that it might be of sciento-magical interest later, they scoop up some of the pinkish goo sloughed off from a dead pink hulk, and find it to be not entirely different from the stuff in the jar where the cat was kept in suspended animation.
- Returning to the Countess' palace, she eagerly pays them and compliments their efficiency. She gives them an expense account of a thousand gold, with a promise of plenty more where that came from if they continue to prove their worth - and she pointedly does not demand the return of her badges. She tells them they have free reign to investigate Kannet - with tact and care, of course, and she advises not going in as internal affairs or they will shut up tight. They can also do as they see fit to investigate the conjunction, as long as they don't create a panic or a public nuisance in the process.
Rewards Granted
1,000 gold
Missions/Quests Completed
- Blocking the Pipeworks Flow
- Meet the Countess
Character(s) interacted with
- Countess Saris Marjoleine
- Pipe Manager Granling
Comments