Summary
A wanderer joins the party as the group continues to explore the mysterious crypt below, dismantling a trap, accessing the center of the sunken labyrinth, and finding a horror within.
Player characters
- Carda the heretical scholar, played by Sam S
- Ezel the wanderer, played by Truzzy_02
- Gaspar “Sarge” Brunel, pilot and sharpshooter played by ceacelessCarbine
Summary
Returning back to the plane to notify Gaspar and Sir Kengei about the crypt below, the party encounters a lone wanderer trekking alongside the Sea of Corruption.
Hailing the group, this individual introduces themselves as Ezel, a wanderer drawn to the location by the commotion of the recent plane crash. The group trades recent stories, and decides to coordinate a further search of the ancient crypt.
Ezel produces some paper and ink for the small girl Olmay, asking her to replicate the figure she saw take the occupants of the plane. She begins roughly stabbing at the paper with, dotting it heavily, depicting a heavy scratching of dots roughly in humanoid shape, bearing a triangular hat or helmet.
The group discusses old legends of the region, stories that a buzzing, mercurial shape would sometimes take the form of a person or dog and lure village folk away, never to be seen again. Olmay noted the buzzing she heard when the assailant attacked the plane. Carda decides she will place one of the “unusual” wasp eggs from the plane into the device she found in another crypt elsewhere in her journeys.
Gaspar notes the difficulty getting down to the crypt and attaches a knotted rope to a nearby tree, giving easy traversal to the group and their worm handler companions.
The group returns to the section of the crypt with the peculiar gun hanging from the ceiling that fires upon movement a few yards from its location. Peeking into the chemical laboratory Carda warns the group that she feels uncertain the party should go through the hole into the next room, but she does capture some into the device she carries with her.
Gaspar decides to return to the hallway, taking aim upon the red dot near the turret. With a single shot from his pistol he damages what seemed to be the vision apparatus of the gun, seemingly disabling it.
With that the group asks the worm handlers to release their slugs, continuing their search of the missing people. The slugs continue to sniff directly down the hallways, the group noticing a branch off to some massive double doors to their right, and the hallways terminating in a three-pronged fork.
The door before them appearing locked, a study bolt is felt near the handle, and the peculiar keypad that flanks each archway having been dismantled, its wires brushing the floor.
Carda thinks and removes a rifle shell from her pouch, asking the group to put their weight against the door so that she may wedge a round inbetween the jam and the door itself. Standing back Sarge takes aim and shoots the round, igniting the powder from within and bursting the lock open.
The dark hallway within glistens with the grey sludge seen about the hole in the laboratory. The slug worms become hesitant to enter, and Carda chides Olmay that she’ll never see her mother again if she doesn’t go through the muck.
To their surprise, Olmay immediately marches through it. Seeing no immediate harm come to the child, Carda, Gaspar, and Ezel follow after, with the worm handlers nervously waiting behind.
They enter into a donut-shaped room filled with ancient technology, debris, and work stations. The center of this room is a glass cylinder, seemingly reaching down at least one floor and up further. Within this massive space within they spy multiple people affixed along the walls of the lower floor, cocooned in the grey slime. A massive, slender figure stalks around these people in the center, a shifting prickly figure with long arms and a pointed helmet, almost like the static seen from the black windows seen on ancient technology stations.
Olmay gasps and points to her mother down among the captured, and the party scavenges for supplies to free these people, debating if their next course of action will be to descend a shaft into the central room, of if they will try a pincer attack by sending some of their members down to the first floor to a visible doorway.
Thoughts
I had a great time, and we got a lot of fun with inter character dialogue, discussing the world, and contemplating the various things the group has seen within the tomb. I definitely need to find a way to record dialogue, I am always bad at doing that in my notes and I always feel I’m doing a disservice not quoting the players.
We discussed the pace of the game and agreed that everyone is having fun with the more relaxed nature of it, but agreed to bring it up again if it ever doesn’t fit play expectations.