AAR: [ECR8M/H] Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27 2130GMT)

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ottdmk
Posts:462
Joined:Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:25 pm
AAR: [ECR8M/H] Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27 2130GMT)

Post by ottdmk » Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:45 am

AAR: Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27)
GM: ottdmk
ECR: 8
Difficulty: Medium

Player Rewards:
Dvarim: 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs
Jael: 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs
Vlolkir: 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs
William: 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs
Zil: 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs

Journal Reward: +950 Legend, +225 sp
GM Reward: Dubhan, 19,000 Legend, 900 sp, 3 TIPs

Downtime:
Forge Weapon 8/19, Item History 4/15, Forge Armor 8/19 (Dvarim)
Research rank 4, step 12 (step 15 if pay 20 sp for library access), Item History Rank 3 (step 15 with karma) (Zil)
Forge Weapon (3) Step 8, Research 3(10) (13 with library access) Item History 5 (12). (William)
Animal Training (Rank 7) 17 (Jael)

Shokunin
Posts:136
Joined:Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:50 pm

Re: LFG: [ECR8M/H] Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27 2130GMT)

Post by Shokunin » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:18 am

From A Loosely Tied Sheaf of Papers Titled 'Vlolkir'

Irondelve has many people now I hear. Many more than were there when I saw. They speak of opening a mine, a mine which was there before the kaer. The villagers want it, a company in Throal wants it. But none can have it, as none who go in come out. The mine is dangerous, and the villagers cannot claim it. There were horrors in the kaer before it opened, and they have probably claimed it. All around there is corruption.

I go with others, Dvarim, William, Jael, Zil. We go to see what may be done about the mine. There is trade and travel now from Irondelve. We go along the road from Irondelve. We are alone in the morning as we walk, but then I feel a thing, and so do others, of warnings of danger. William calls and we see boars, large, even larger than I have seen outside of Throal. They come quickly and charge. I strike a blow and fell one to the ground. Then I am beset. Jael is beset as well. The boars run around and strike with tusks and blade-sharp hairs. I have wounds and rents, but as Zil has used great magick on me I strike even more furiously than these things. One gets away and sunders Williams huttawa. With lightning and leaping are the boars squeals cut short. We take tusks and hides and with much resting return to our road.

In Irondelve we speak to people, they all say the same of the mine. They say it is cursed or it is dangerous and they do not go. They say others went in, to look for riches and did not return. So now we go to look for dead folk. In the mine it is dark, as the others say. I can see little as it is a mine and the ceiling is short. Like a hole, or a kaer. I do not like the small holes. As I look, there is too much corruption in this place to see with the magic eye. The others have been talking, I do not know to what but they say it is a spirit. It speaks to William and tells of dangers in the mine. I will ask later of the elementalists what they say.

We go down a right branch and William is ahead following the words of the spirit. He returns and says there is danger. We set ourselves and out of the darkness come Obsidiman. It is larger than the ones I know. It has more heads and is wrong in many ways. I know enough to know it should not be. I charge this thing and it reaches out. I see the mine change, now I am somewhere else full of evil and namegivers being split and crushed. It is hard to focus through the screams. More now than usual.

As I face Obsidiman, more come. They reach out and attack our minds, they are deadly with madness. I and the others are wounded greatly and we see the things of terror around us. Dvarim claims these are visions of illusion, but if it is a horror illusion it still must be killed and I will get to them. With great strikes we bring the tainted ones down, and the visions are gone. This is well. The mine is empty now and we go to tell the village. The village says there is no right passage of the mine. They are wrong. We go to see again, and the end of the passage is a Liferock where stone-brothers come from. We speak of how to destroy it so no other tainted ones may leave. The others say to ask Obsidimen and this is all well but I will not be leaving until it is done.

bronzemountain
Posts:606
Joined:Fri Feb 21, 2020 10:02 pm

The Journal of Dvarim Bolg, Journeyman Weaponsmith of Throal

Post by bronzemountain » Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:05 pm

Too Many Nightmares
Or, To Whom do I Complain about these Giant Deathless Pigs?

The good folks of Irondelve have been kept out of their ancestral mine by fears of some Dopplers that were found inside. I'm told these are identity-stealing Horrors, which seems a nasty thing, indeed. William and Jael wanted to go back and I felt this was a good mission. Especially as it would let the people of Irondelve manage their own land rather than having a trading company (Borodai) come in and steal it from them.

On the way there, we were attacked by the most ridiculous pigs of all time. Seriously, there is just no reason for these pigs to exist. For one thing, each of them was taller at the shoulder than an ork. An entire ork! I could build a house in one of those pigs if I wanted some kind of damn pig house. On top of that, they had not two, not four, but sometimes as many five or six tusks which is just plain showing off. And those tusks weren't just toothy material, but were iron, too. What the actual hell?! To top it all off, their hide was covered with not just hair, but slivers of steel. And when we knocked one out, when it should have had the damn good sense to stay down, it just decided to ignore death and keep running around tusking us.

Deathless steel pigs the size of houses. That's what the world has come to. I would like to lodge a complaint.

Anyway, we did those pigs in proper, taking a few solid cuts and sprained joints and countless bruises along the way. Nasty business, but it was done. No sense letting all that good iron go to waste (as it was already wasted on, and I repeat, some damn pigs). So I collected a bunch of the tusks and a goodly swath of Razor Boar hide. I'm thinking I might be able to enchant up a good cloak with this hide. Real potential to turn this nonsense into good honest craftsmanship.

So we came to Irondelve, and the people greeted us kindly enough. We headed down into their mine to solve their Doppler problem. Good news - there was no Doppler problem. Bad news - that means the Dopplers are out and about somewhere. Further bad news, there's some kind of Obsid Liferock that's gone mad and is spitting out Obsidifolk all mashed up in twos and threes. Horrors, let me tell you. With a capital damn H.

These nonsense-makers and trouble-casters assaulted us with their minds. Did quite a number on us, just from the pain, but that wasn't the worst of it. They hit us with some kind of illusion, made us feel like we'd been transported to some terrible place where innocent folk were getting tortured and abused. It was, well, Horrible. I managed to free myself from the illusion after charging madly at one of the torturers only to have it vanish beneath my ask.

Then I slapped the madness right off Vlolkir, because that is how it's done. I do not stand for this kind of tomfoolery. Illusions of torture indeed. Harrrumph! I tried to tell my friends that it was all in their minds but they were hell bent on murder.

Eventually, their desire to kill the Horrors matched up with their ability to kill the Horrors and the thing was done. Strange, the folks of Irondelve didn't even remember the tunnel we'd gone down, let alone the Liferock at the end of it.

There's clearly some seriously bad business going on here but I don't feel comfortable making any permanent decisions without talking to some Obsidifolk and maybe a Purifier or three. I decided to spend a week at Irondelve helping the folk settle in and start working the safe parts of the mine. Vlolkir also stayed, so I figure that slap did him some good.

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: AAR: [ECR8M/H] Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27 2130GMT)

Post by ChrisDDickey » Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:30 pm

From the journal of Zil, Elementalist and Adherent of Garlen.

We received a missive from the good people of Irondelve. They wish to reopen their iron mine, but everybody they sent down into the depths failed to return. Also of great concern to them is that representatives of the Borodai mining consortium have been saying that if Irondelve can't work the mine, then Borodai should be given a chance. Irondelve asked our help in clearing the mine.  The journey there was unremarkable except that we encountered a species of Boar that none of us had heard of before, which we called Razor Boar. They were about as tall as a horse (but with much more bulk) and had metallic spines. Sadly, I decided that any creature with that much metal in them was unlikely to be safe to eat (though Jael's Griffin and Williams Hattawa both ate heartily and seemed to suffer no ill effects). 

After talking to the leaders of Irondelve, we girded our loins and descended into the mine. At each splitting of the shafts, William used his Safe Path talent to identify the safest path, and then we took the more dangerous one, thus we headed directly to the focus of the corruption. William scouted out ahead and we followed him at a distance. At one point he came back to report that he had spotted some creatures up ahead. We considered trying to sneak up on them, but realized that none of us except for William was at all sneaky, so we just cast a buff spell or two, and ran forward screaming. The things ran towards us as well and we met in the middle. 

The things were called Dreamers, and they were heavily corrupted Obsidimen. Each of them looked like two or three Obsidimen who had somehow grown together. They had very strong horror powers. 

For my buff spells before they even knew we were coming, I cast Mantle of the Fire Marauder on Vlolkir, then quickly tied some threads to thunderclap and rushed forward to cast it. It dazed them and kept them from affecting them with their horror powers as powerfully as they might have. One of their powers was "Night Terrors", which gave us hallucinations and made us see horrible things. Somebody, I think it was Davarim yelled that the things were really just illusions and that we should ignore them, but I was not certain whether he was talking about the Night Terrors or the Dreamers, and I felt it unsafe to ignore them both. 

After we finished off the dreamers, we checked the rest of the mine and found it safe. However when we returned to town and tried to point out on a map of the mine where the nest had been, they insisted that there was not a passage in that location. We went down and triple-checked, and found that the passage was new, and that there was a Life-Rock at the end of it. A heavily corrupted liferock! Apparently there had not been a liferock there before, but now there was! We know of at least one occasion of a liferock moving during the scourge. And for all we know, during scourges are when new liferocks do form (or I should say, none of us have any idea whatsoever of when or how life-rocks form).  In any case, Irondelve Mine now features an (apparently) new, heavily corrupted liferock, that spawns corrupted horror-constructs instead of obsidimen!

Time to get the scholars and the purifiers and the Obsidimen elders squabbling about what this all means and what to do about it. 

Montaugh
Posts:203
Joined:Thu Dec 19, 2019 1:49 pm

Re: AAR: [ECR8M/H] Mine Sweeper (2020-06-27 2130GMT)

Post by Montaugh » Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:56 pm

My name is William Carver and I am a seventh circle Scout, fifth circle thief, and on the path of the Journeyman.

I was contacted by the to clear the mines of Irondelve. The people had started to mine within its areas once more and were vanishing within the mines. I sought out some aid Zil, Dvarim, Vlolkir, and Jael.

We traveled our way to the times and we were beset upon by some razor boars. I was hoping that they would let us pass peacefully but that was to not be the case. A battle quickly ensued and one of the boars that I had attacked charged Charlie and I. It knocked down Charlie and I and nearly killed Charlie, I was most upset by this and wished nothing more than to take Charlie's pain away, and to kill the one that caused such pain to my friend. Zil beat me to the punch though and killed the beast with a blast of lightning. These creatures are mean, they do not fall from damage, they simply keep going until they die. Nothing stops them, if you encounter them either flee if you are able, or seek to kill them. Do not hold back, do not pause and give them quarter, for you will receive none.

A few days later we made our way to the mine. I used my talents to find a safe path within the mines.. and went towards the danger. I scouted up ahead, saw some creatures and moved back towards the others to report what I had seen. We found horrors known as Dreamers here. We engaged them and they are hard to kill. They are heavily armored and played with our minds causing us to see horrors ripping apart people. We were surrounded by enemies on all sides and pressed our attacks until all of them fell. We found a life rock within and are seeking the help of some obsidmen to help purify it at a future date.

This was a rough mission, Charlie almost died and that angered me into the very depths of my pattern. Not only because something has nearly killed this wonderful companion, but also because I had failed to protect him. I need to do better as he deserves better from me.

William Carver

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