A Thousand Ships

3 days since the refugees arrived. The noble remains unconscious. No idea who he is, some of his compatriots have refused to identify him, and the harbourmaster has been stimulated to jump on people who are asking too many questions. The other refugees have been gradually dispersed to host families, to other islands, and some good number back to Tajidar by other routes. We’ll probably have about 20 more permanent residents than before, which isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

2nd of the moon umber.

Nagan, having helped extensively with the refugees, is dying to get back to the Steinberg. Some of his anxiousness comes from conversations with refugees about the war. The Strazi have shipborne weapons they shouldn’t have, and they were able to take over a fortified coastal city too easily. But he has no idea what to expect when he gets there. “The steinbergs should not have anything of value to anyone but dwarven engineers. The only things that should have been left there are things that could not be moved. But the Strazi have clearly found things that told them how to make that ship better, and if they have taken Kalmadiz with such offensive ease, they must have found something else as well.”

Why now, when you couldn’t deal with Creomor before? He’s hoping he can do something with him this time. He’s hoping very much that there’s nothing in there of any use.

Rannon’s still hanging around. There was some contact between him and Creomor. Khalid wonders if him coming along could help. Nanda tracks him down in his new digs. He’s sitting in a water trough, scrubbing, and looking cheerful. “Good day! I think I should have the last layer of filth from the ship off some time today.” bad time to ask you to come and acquire more? “Yes” Come to the temple anyway? “Is there mud?” Not in the temple. “Very well.” He leaves his door swinging open. When warned about lots of new people being about, he says to Nanda “They won’t touch anything in there.”

He sniffs about the temple. “It’s a bit odd, the whole notion of dedicated buildings. I can see the point, though.” We introduce him to Nagan. Rannon bows in a sudden dwarven fashion.

Khalid: “We’re planning on returning to the building where we met Creomor. nagan feels that it’s imperative for a lot of things to go in and investigate. Creomor is not the most social minded of people that we haev met.” “He used to throw lavish banquets you know” “He appears to have changed”

Nanda: “What happened?” R: “I couldn’tq uite say. When I met him first time he had already become disillusioned and was already on his way away, as it were.” K: “That siad, he’s still a powerful priest, and when we last entered to talk to him it was via a mixture of force on our part and curiosity on his that we engaged his attention and nonaggression for long enough to discuss what we needed to disacuss, and for him to point us in your directino. Most fortuitously, you then came to us.” R: “Coincidental that, don’t you think.” K: “So we wish to return to this building, and we felt it mnight be safer to do so with someone that Creomor knows and seemingly trusts.”

Rannon sighs loudly. “How far has his unsociability gone?” He associates with goats. He used reasonably powerful magic to be left alone, and it probably wouldn’t have worried him if any of us died. Rannon: “Is there not a duty of some kind on your part as a priest to prevent him form doing things like that?” Um. Yeah. There kind of is really. “Let us come back to the associates with goats line. Elaborate.” He throws rocks. He uses a goat as an alarm system. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” He smells a great deal. He advised Khalid to drop dead, and Khalid was stubborn enough not to follow, but didn’t feel very well at all. “This is not good.”

Nanda: “He had a spiral pendant, but I thought for a little while there was a piece of amber attached to it.” R: “I’ve no notion what that might be.” J: “He was using Charismatic Divining.” R: “But he trained as a priest. Studying prevents you from using that. And I’ve never heard of anyone using it. Using it would not be conducive to someone’s mental health.” J: “Not the first odd use of magic either.” N: “You’ve heard us mention the church of shafts?” R: “No…” Jess shows him the pendant. N: “We found that with a man who had been buried alive.” Rannon has his head in his hands. “How far away is this place?” N: “A couple of days.” R: “I will accompany you. The thing about these islands is that there’s mud everywhere.” N: “Not so much up there. It was quite dry when we were there last. Mostly rocks and dry grass.” R: “That’s probably better. You see, I was brought up in sand. Just clean sand. Every since I left it I have not felt properly clean. Bare rock might do. Very well. When do you want to go?” Nagan’s anxious to get underway asap. We get sorted.

R: “How did you know that Creomor was there?” J: “Nanda, should we tell your associate we’re going?” N: “Don’t see any reason why. We should leave word with Arkvanin.” Jess goes to tell him.

We head off within the hour and make good time. Two days later we’re in sight of the bridge. Rannon’s twitching reduced when he got out of agricultural lands and along the wall he was perfectly steady. Along the dwarven road, perfectly sane and confident. Nagan marches on while Rannon stops to sniff the air. Jess pelts Nagan with something to stop him. R: “I can smell him from here. He has associated with more than goats. I will deal with this later.” What is it? “My nose is sensitive, but for me to smell him at this distance he must have been collecting dead goats for some time. Good gods, what happened to that gate?” Nagan explains that something did somethign to it to break it, someone occupied the place, reinstalled some of the weapon mounts at least, one assumes held it for a while, and moved out agian. He doesn’t know what any of this means.

We pass by the first gate. There’s no goat at the second gate, where there was one before. Khalid takes point. In the chamber beyond is the big pile of stones, but no sign of Creomor. Just a lone goat wandering around and bleating pathetically, which Khalid feeds. Nagan’s taking detailed notes. “Through those arches there should lead to the main workhalls. That’s the place I’d most expect to find anything left behind, because it’s where tehre would have been the most objects.” We follow him through. The goat follows Khalid.

This cavern, and the last, are huge. We’re probably into the mountain here. Nagan: “This is as near empty as makes no matter. If you’ll follow I suppose?” Nanda: “Do you know your way around?” Nagan: “I’ve not been here before but I’ve an idea.” Khalid: “How far in are we going?” Nagan: “All the way through it. I can’t determine it’s empty till I’ve seen all the rooms. No more than a mile.” K: “Under a mountain.” Nagan: “Yes, a good safe place for it.” Nanda: “Is it too enclosed?” K: “We’re under a mountain. This doesn’t upset anyone else?”

Nanda draws attention to the goats. They’ve been gutted most untidily. Nanda wonders if there’s something else down here that’s causing the smell. Jess spends fate point: what’s going on with the goats? They are very very dead goats. There seems to be no connection with any ritual within the church of spires. Khalid reckons that the livers are specifically missing. Liver’s used for divination. Why so many?

Rannon: “This doesn’t resemble any rituals I know of. Did you see goats disemboweled like this before?” We didn’t get this far before.

Nagan halts approaching the arch to the next cavern. “Oh.” In there is a huge, complicated engine of some variety. Part stone, part metal, cogs, chains, no idea what it does. Nanda reckons it’s lower planar. Nagan: “It’s not going to draw from the lower planes, no, it’s designed to draw energy from very far below, physically. This is goign to upset Khalid, but when you pile enough rocks on top of one another, the rocks at the bottom become hot and liquid. This taps down right to that level and brings up heat and energy from below. Heat, fire and when necessary molten rock.”

Khalid is off singing a little song in his mind.

Nagan: “One, it should not be here. This is a secret of dwarven technology and if I had the slightest thought that any of you could replicate it I would have to kill you. But, two, it shows every sign of having been used recently.” Khalid sees that it’s bigger than the doors we’ve come through. K: “It couldn’t have been got out of here so what would it be used for?” Nagan: “By someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s used ot take the molten rock and refine it to get particular elements from it. If you imagine that the earth is a liquid and it can be distilled, oyu can get purer and purer forms of stone, metal and minerals. This machine can do it, and when they are sufficiently distilled it moulds them into tools or, I greatly fear, weapons.”

Ah. Which may have been used recently. Nagan: “I don’t know. The level of…” Khalid: “But if the weapons were used in the attack, the Strazi would know that they were here, would be guarding it and wouldn’t have gone through the ridiculous pantomime they went through a few days ago.” J: “One must conclude that they don’t have direct access. Someone else must be an intermediary.”

Nagan’s upset.

Khalid: “So you must either bring others of your kind to guard or remove it, or we must destroy it.” Nagan: “being perfectly honest, its presence here is not the thing that’s worst here. It’s that there’s someone with the knowledge to use it. I coudl use it in a very crude fashion. I could produce, say, bars of iron.” Khalid: “But others of your people can. one of them?” Nagan: “We are people who follow our laws closely. Something like this should have been reported to the Hark immediately on its discovery. It should not be sitting here used.”

What are you going to do? Nagan: “First I intend to see if the machine is in working order. Then I intend to disable it by removing a few small essential parts. And then I suppose I’m going to have to try to work out in some way who used it and where they took whatever they made. If I can determine what they made perhaps I can tell something more.” Rannon wants to see the other rooms. Nagan acks that we should make sure the person who used this is not still here.

The next arch leads into a small courtyard, open to the sky. Nagan and Rannon have headed for the far side. There’s an un-dwarven hole in the wall where some stones have been torn out, and it slants downward into a tunnel. Khalid’s not happy at all at a tunnel not made by the people who are really good at making things. It opens to a small cave. Nagan’s confused. It contains a small altar on which is set out as a very old, very dusty altar of the church of spires. It’s not been used recently. Jess says that this particular style really really old, dedicated to Diacorez, a god of trade and craft, and this style of altar hasn’t been used in more than 400 years. Nagan’s poking around at the rock. “This cave, it’s rock cut and gives every indication of having been here before the fortress. That’s older than the human occupation of these lands, so at least 800 years. I would suppose -” standing where the rock cut becomes brick stonework “- I would say that the Steinberg itself is at least a thousand years old.”

There’s an ominous grinding sound above from the tunnel. Nagan’s sprinting up, Khalid following, then the rest of us. There’s a huge cut stone blocking the tunnel. Khalid gets a fate point for being not happy. Nanda tries to calm him down. Nagan: “This stone weighs about forty tons. Whoever, you are, let us out!” Jess asks him to find another way out. “Hmm, it doesn’t smell down here. Ah! No…” He does something with part of the cut rock wall, and a slab of stone swings out from it. “This is the door that covers the end of the tunnel here. It can be locked from the outside.” He pulls it open a bit further. “Uh. Um. I don’t like the look of this.” Jess goes to look. There are rust brown vertical marks up and down the back of the door. Oh dear.

Jess asks Rannon to check if anyone’s on the far side of the stone, then Jess fires a stoneshape at the door. It starts to work. He digs through it like clay. He emerges on the far side. There’s nobody there. More upsettingly, in the dust that comes down to here, the only footprints are our own.

Khalid barrels through into the courtyard, where there’s sunlight, and screams the scream of ages. Rannon casts a spell and says there’s an undead presence. Best guess, something was walled up in there some time ago, and now seeks to trap others. Nanda notes that it’s another case of involuntary death.

We check the last caverns and find a bunch of paraphenalia, books, maps, pilgrimage calculations of high complexity, the stuff of a priest of the church of spires. There’s a rough tressle bed here. The pilgrimage calcs are two orders of magnitude removed from anything Jess could calculate. There is a smell here, but no stronger than anywhere else. There haven’t been any dead goats for a while. All the books have written on them that they are the possession of Creomor - no title, just Creomor. A series of dates ranging from 40 years ago to 2 years ago.

Nanda reckons this is the core of a theological library second to none. This is the stuff the church of spires keeps secret. In many ways it gives them the power they have. The stuff they don’t tell outsiders. It’s always been theorised that pilgrimage calculation is a matter of academics not faith, and looking here it seems to be the case. She says to Jess that this stuff probably shouldn’t be let out behind lock doors. We spread out enough to keep within sight of each other while Nagan goes to disable the machine.

From the direction of the machine there’s a huge roar, and a wave of heat comes out among the caverns. “The dwarf says that all is well, he’s just determining what was last made.”

Nanda agrees to take some. She gets the less confidential stuff, while Jess empties out his own pack, puts the serious stuff in there and places a filled lamp on the top. This happens to be the books that are most used. The ones he’s mostly ignored are the unmarked maps. One appears to be the island of Theiumus in a lot of detail - Nanda snarfs this.

Nagan is fifteen, twenty minutes from done. This is followed by a huge gust of steam. Rannon has a shower with this.

Nagan eventually returns with several pieces of metal in his hands and a confusde look. “Khalid, I think you were right. It must be a renegade of my people.” He hodls out a complicated shaped bit of metal. “This is what was last made. It is a piece of a piece of a particualrly powerful siege engine, but it is one part among four or five hundred.” Khalid needs “siege engine” explained to him.

We get going. Two thirds of the way out of the place, Nagan halts. There’s a blank wall ahead of us. “The arch that I was about to walk through is not there.” We can’t find the courtyard either. Khalid: “We are being herded, however we have little option. If we follow the way we are being herded we might eventually find the person doing this and then we can kill them.” Rannon: “One, they’re dead already. Two, they don’t want to put us anywhere, they just want to keep us here.”

Khalid has moved form fear to rage.

Nagan: “Tell me of these reversed rituals.” Jess does. Rannon asks if this must be a pilgrimage place. Jess furtively checks the books in his backpack. It appears to be. Roll 0 on pilgrimage calc. The vast majority of pilgrimage sites are coastal. But looking at the pilgrimage routes on some of these maps, this one was important. Uses Redemption aspect - the major thing that didn’t happen here was a proper funeral. There’s a parallel with the burial in Theiumus.

Jess goes down to the shrine, alone, to do the lost at sea ritual.

1. Dust off the altar.
2. Lay out the altar properly.
3. Stand behind it and say the words of the ritual.
It’s getting very hard to say the words. Starting to sweat. The walls are closing in. Never going to see the sky again.

From outside, it’s clear that Jess is in some difficulty, but nothing’s evidently changed in the tunnel. Rannon is looking at the celing, but occasionally his lips move in sync with what Jess is saying, reciting along when he can.

This last prayer is the one that novice priests get wrong a lot. Nanda, very quietly, lurks downstairs, so that Jess doesn’t notice. He’s down to slow, deliberate, words one at a time. Then suddenly he’s into a clear stretch and the closing prayer has never come so easily before, running out perfectly clearly. The elderly clerics of Preia, who have more routine prayers than the other priests, babble them off perfectly clearly without trying, and this is flowing out just as easily. It comes to an end and over Kahlid’s head the roof is gone. It’s a courtyard again.

There’s a very tiny sound from the door. Nanda invisibly retreats back. The dried blood on the back of the door is gone. Jess returns the altar to stable state, picks up his bag, looks about, and gets the hell out of there.

Nagan leads us out confidently and straightforward following his map. It does what it’s supposed to. We get out through the gates and onto the bridge.

Khalid runs very very quickly to the nearest bit of actual real life ground across the bridge and does the falling down on knees manoeuvre. He gets back up, strides straight back over to Nanda, picks her up, hugs her and puts her back down again.

Nagan: “Some of you have more of a mind for tactics than I do. Or strategy, or whatever is necessary here. I have two choices here. I can get myslef back ot Harkfast as quickly as possible, but at the very best unless a dwarven ship sails into the harbour the day we get back there, its’ going to take me a month and a half ot get back to Harkfast. Then I can call out the troops and priests and historians and get them to find whoever is or was in control of that machine. Or I can start looking for them myself.” How? “Well first I’ll go to this city of Kalmadiz, look for evidence that the piece has been used there, then work backward by asking people there whath appened to see what ship it was on, and proceed in that manner.” Don’t say you’ll work backwards, that’ sbad luck.

Nanda suggests we go back to the village, then hold a council of sorts of people that we can trust, and we again make contact with the duke, because he will need to know about this, especially if the forces of the two nations will ever learn of this place. Then we’ll see what happens. Nagan agrees.

Four hours later, we stop for a meal. Khalid asks what’s in our packs. “Stuff I couldn’t leave behind.” Nanda fishes.

Nanda asks what he’s going to do with the books. Rannon, carefully angling his sight away, suggests that it might be best to let a higher ranking priests know asap that he has them, in case someone thinks he took them.

Khalid: “Creomor. Where is he?” Rannon’s been wondering. Khalid: “I ask largely out of academic interest. It’s possible that thing in the fortress decided to kill him.” Nagan: “Didn’t see a body.” Khalid: “How recently was that machine used?” Nagan: “I would guess less than a month, but that is a guess.” Khalid: “So however the person using hte machine they got in, they got in without Creomor noticing, or when he was away.” Nagan: “Or Creomor was the one using the machine. The thought occurs tom e that since this Creomor is clearly educated fmor his collection of books and so forth, is there any chance that he could know enough to work the machine?” Khalid: “And then make some device for the Strazi military?” Rannon: “He left the church of spires some time before I first met him which was about fifteen years ago.” Nagan: “If he has not been learning it all his life, he could not have learned it in fifteen years. Dwarven masters take 600 years to arrive at full comprehension of that art.”

Nagan wants to get in the extra hour’s travel before night falls fully.

Two days later, we arrive back in Theumus. There’s, again, a new and different ship in the harbour. A small and unremarkably strazi tradeship.

Jess heads straight for Colman Lucas to talk to Arcvanin, who can probably be trusted. A: “If some of them are chained they would be unique, so burning them is… what the hell have you found?” We bring them down to the vault. Nanda offers to hide them but Arcvanin and Jess won’t let her. Jess does his best to explain why, and his gratitude for her taking them this far.

In the vault is a small wooden box which Arcvanin carefully takes and moves to the top shelf. We pass the books in to him one at a time, starting with Nanda’s.

“This one is in fact unique. It was supposed to have been destroyed. An edict 250 odd years ago went out that this be destroyed. It is erroneous in bad bad ways. Pilgrimages calculated by it would be awry. They would let loose effects other than the ones desired.” Shall we then? “No, because the edict was repealed 225 years ago but it hasn’t been seen since. It’s still erroneous but there is other information in there.” He flicks through it. “It’s been annotated so that it’s correct.”

Of the books that are there, three are still under edict of destruction, and thirty had edicts at some stage for either destruction or complete recall. A bunch more are just things he’s never heard of. Arcvanin’s in mild shock.

“I think you should draft a letter addressing it to the first person of Erthark rank or higher that the messenger comes across and tell them what’s here in rough terms.” Jess reckons he’ll draft two or three, send them in different loads. Just saying that they need to come. Nanda reckons that it’s risky alerting more than one. Arcvanin will give it to Bannington who can make it to the mainland in about a day and a half - there could be someone here in three to five days.

Nanda invites Arcvanin over to Jess’s the next day to discuss what else was going on in the place.