AAR: Royal Blood

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abishaij1
Posts:63
Joined:Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:07 am
AAR: Royal Blood

Post by abishaij1 » Sun Dec 23, 2018 1:32 am

Royal Blood
Time: 2018-12-16@19:00 GMT
GM: haksanlulz (Fenrir)
Circle: 9
Difficulty: Hard

Player Rewards:
Aegharan: 5 TIP, 58,000 Legend, 2,350 silver, 4,000 silver of Orichalkum
Gronk: 58,000LP, 4,350SP, 5TIPs
Thane 58,000 lp 4,350 sp 5 Tips
Ceadda: 58,000LP, 4,350SP, 5TIPs
Romari: 5 TIP, 58,000 Legend, 2,350 silver, 4,000 silver of Orichalcum

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

Re: AAR: Royal Blood

Post by ChrisDDickey » Sun Dec 23, 2018 1:54 am

From the journal of Thane Cawdor.

I dislike working for that amoral scoundrel Mr. Livé, but interesting challenges have been hard to find lately, so when I saw flyers that he was having troubles and was looking for "exterminators", I held my nose and went to see him. At least long enough to find out exactly who/what he wanted exterminated. Some jobs I will not do. Surprisingly, it seems like he did not desire anything dishonorable. There was trouble at a True Earth / Orichalcum / Living Crystal mine and smelter he owned (map coordinate 4810). His concern was that his workers were not getting the job done. Amazingly he did not want us to slave drive his workers, he just wanted us to find out what was bothering them and fix it. It seemed like an unusually reasonable approach for him. Romari, Ceadda, Gronk, Aegharan, and myself agreed to look into it.

The trip to the mine was mostly uneventful, Aegharan cast flying carpets for each of us and we wafted though the mountains. untroubled by anything except for a snowbird that briefly mistook us for lunch.

The workers of the mine looked cadaverous or zombie like. Hollow eyed and acting as if they were exhausted from lack of sleep. We were led by the foreman to a section of the mine with much living crystal. There was a huge sinkhole, descending into a shaft. At the bottom of the shaft were 6 bodies 6 to 8 weeks dead. At the top of the shaft there was evidence of a fight. We descended the shaft, Romari told us that something seems to have tried but failed to dispel some of his flight spells partway down.

At the bottom of the sinkhole the crashed crystal intersected a passage cut through the crystal. Reflected in the walls floors and ceilings of the crystal passageway were thousands of faces, of all races, sexes and ages, all showing extreme agony. The crystal radiated an icy cold. We followed the passage, the walls of which displayed more of the faces to a doorway shaped like a gargoyle.

Within the door we started to explore a large complex that we eventually realized was a monastery of some sorts. It had a very large chapel, a scriptorium, dormitories for about 40 monks and hundreds of slaves, priests rooms, a refectory, etc. It also had a torture chamber in a very prestigious location (near the head priests rooms, opposite the chapel). I was impressed by the size of the place. We eventually learned that the monastery was dedicated to the Cult of Duvan Ku, which none of us had ever heard of.

Among the removable things we found necklace, a sacrificial dagger (thread item), and a locket. We also found a lens, that when looking though it allows one to read this particular dead language. Among the many books and writings were a manual on how to make flesh golumns (grimoure of the new flesh), 18 books of history of the cult (bound with namegiver skin), and a "book of the exalted interrogator" (how-to book for torturers). The writings we found claimed that the cult had a 9 millennia history, It seemed to worship ether blood magic, or the power which blood magic could tap into. We found many different books of writings, some of which we decided to burn, but some of which we bundled up for the Library of Throal (though most of even those we decided not to burn we feel are destined for the Restricted Stacks). There were many stories contained within these various books, though we do not know if they are true history or just stories. There are tales of something called the 7 greater repugnance's (possibly prophets or high priests). Glancing thorough one legend that struck my eye was of Magen Eisenthras, accused as a traitor helping to foment a slave revolt, he was ripped in 6 pieces and his remains stored in one or more clocks?

Looking at the last pages of the history books, we found that they were excited that a millennia long project seemed to be nearing it's end. They had a theory that if they could murder enough people with sacrificial daggers (this rite was called the million violations), they would achieve enough power to create something they called a "sacred parasite". Something about how the history found in a long deserted monastery ends with them anticipating the end of the ritual makes me suspect the ending of the ritual did not conclude quite the way they had hoped.

Eventually we tried doing a Mystic Pursuit upon the sacrificial dagger we had found. It told us "something" was north of the torture chamber. We searched the walls, but could not find anything. We resumed exploring and eventually found a passage that lead up that way. We passed many crypts. Generations of priests and others. Eventually we stood before a vault-like door behind which we estimated the sacred parasite might lay. We opened it and strode forward, encountering a huge slug-like thing with the head, torso, and arms of a man, it had many crystal globes with anguished faces inside embedded in it's body. We all heaped many grievous blows upon it, but it took many, many blows to kill. Before it was slain it spewed a poison which incapacitated everybody except Ceadda and I.

When the thing was dead, it's slug-like body collapse and most of the globes that had been embedded in it's body shattered upon the floor. We saw thousands of what we took to be life essences wafting from the globes towards the crypts. After Ceadda and I carried the others out of the poison bathing the room they eventually recovered, and Romari reported that the dead within the crypts had all woken up and were moving!

The Sacred Parasite had been resting upon a shaft that lead down (much like something seems to have been covering the shaft we had come down, until suddenly it was not). There was also a third shaft heading down as well.

I write these brief words during a short rest that we are taking before exploring further. We will have to see if the workers in the mine above are feeling better. I am curious if the anguished faces are gone from the crystal lining the passage that we approached from. We have yet to finish mapping the complex, as there were more rooms beyond where the parasite was, and of course the two shafts heading down. We also have to give thought to what to do about the occupants of the crypts. Just to be clear, it is not our intention to leave this place until we know a bit more about what is going on with all those formerly dead bodied. Are they alive? Do they need to eat? What? We don't intend to return to Throal and come back some weeks or months later only to learn ether that thousands or more of things have ether escaped from their crypts, or starved to death in our absence. It might be that leaving these things locked up in their crypts is the thing we want to do, but I nether see that as a good long term solution, nor leaving them alone and unsupervised for a few months as a smart move ether. Dealing with this without returning to Throal seems imperative.

Aegharan
Posts:439
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Re: AAR: Royal Blood

Post by Aegharan » Mon Dec 24, 2018 2:26 am

After having to take care of my family's business for way longer than I expected, I heard of a group of trusty friends responding to a call from a certain Mr. Livé. Apparently he works a Mine where True Earth is harvested, along with an Orichalkum smelting operation. Workers kept disappearing, which cut into his profits. Somehow I get the feeling that he is more interested in money than saving his workers, but that might just be some years of working with merchants from Throal and Borgan's Rest.

We had to get a week's worth of walking east, so nearly 2 days of flying. Way there had nice view and a white bird that seemed strangely aggressive. It got nearly killed by a hypervelocitied Object by Romari, followed by a 40 yard Downstrike from Thane. Thane seemed to enjoy jumping ontop of that thing from above, catching himself through Romari's Flight-Spell, then cruising back up.

Arriving at the mine, all the workers appeared super-tired. They barely acknowledged us. What caught our eyes was a kind of ghostly mask without facial features that appeared instead of their faces. It did not seem to be an illusion, though we also did not find the root of this.

We questioned the foreman a little, but didn't get much useful information. Going into the mine, after some time of walking we found a huge hole in the ground of around 10 yards diameter. 4 ropes were hanging down into the hole, but we could not see the ground. Pulling up the rope we saw that after around 50 feet the rope seemed to have unwinded. It wasn't cut, it just quit being a rope. After some deliberation we flew down into the hole and found 6 corpses. Analyzing the existing information Romari and Gronk came to the conclusion that 4 of them climbed down from the ropes, and the other 2 had some sort of fight and fell into the hole.

The floor and walls down here were made of some kind of crystal, with namegiver-faces of all races behind them. Thousands of faces.

We explored this strange halls under the mountain. We found no other living namegivers, but many different halls, strange inscriptions, ice-made skulls hanging from metal chains from the ceiling, an Altar, a celebratory dagger that seemed to be used to collect the namegiver-sacrifices. During this search we also found dozens of chambers, and later some tombs. Further we found crystal snow-globes, that seemed to hold the raw power, harvested by the darkest Blood Magic I have ever encountered. Here goes the lifeforce of thousands of namegivers.

We found a series of books that explained where we were. We learned that this is the cult called "Duvan'Ku", worshipping the "Blessed Afflictor". And we learned that they were sacrificing namegivers to summon the "Sacred Parasite". I don't know if this was what we found, but Gronk was able to pinpoint something using some Pursuit-Talent he has. We tracked it through the corridors. The searching intensified. Beside several toilets and progressively harder to pick locks, we found the most disgutingly smelling abonimation ever, a slug-like creature with a giant bloated head and arms. We immediately charged it, but it took way more hits than we expected. Still we got lucky that Ceadda and Thane did not get paralyzed. I was lucky to wake up really soon, but that could have gone very bad for us, had it spewed that poison towards us earlier, or had we not dealt as much damage in the first couple of blows.

We destroyed all the books we found, except one where the cult seemed to have rigorously tracked all crimes they committed, this goes to the proper authorities in Throal.

Mr. Livé allowed us to purchase Orichalkum at the mine. He saved on transport and guards, we just took as much as we needed, which comes in handy right now, seeing that Romari has mastered crafting of certain items. As Livé is as opportunistic and money-orientated as can be, we shall see what we can bargain for to search and clear the remaining subterranean halls and chambers.

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BattleChad
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Re: AAR: Royal Blood

Post by BattleChad » Mon Jan 07, 2019 12:18 am

The Great Library of Throal thanks Thane and Aegharan for their contributions.

Journal Rewards: 2,900 Legend Points and 1087 Silver

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