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terryclothOr at least, its mine.
We had a session of Lazar's Underworld-themed GURPS game. We recovered from our wounds, and did some light work around the area, then I started meddling in things I didn't understand.
Charlie turned back into a human (or, well, native) before the party got back from the temple to the town. Don took the opportunity to apply first aid (he hadn't wanted to try it on a bird), then he and John spent a long time mummy-tying Charlie to his horse.
Charlie was out for a whole day. Don spent it making up a batch of healing salve (and training the bits of Enochin he still had -- John's friend, with the head, was still AWOL -- to make more of it), and John spent it talking to people and finding out what was going on. The day after that, Charlie and Don were more or less up to speed, but John was still hurt -- he came around to talk with them and ask about what to do next.
John and Charlie both had reason to go to the native village with the mine in it -- John was, apparently, now charged with getting rid of the *Feral* problem instead of the Kits problem, since Kits had now always been a myth (they'd fled the universe after the beating they'd taken in the battle for the robot head), and native-like ferals had started turning up recently. Charlie had been asked to bless a baby, and wanted to inspect the place of power that, in the Industrial Athens, had been under John's mine. Don decided to come along to mine some more Artemisite to power his laser shotgun.
But first, Charlie wanted to rest and recover some fatigue. He spent the time meditating on how to avoid using up so much fatigue so quickly... and learned the spells 'steal strength' and 'steal wisdom'. He practiced the temporary version of steal strength on Don, figuring that Don rarely used his strength and wouldn't notice, but this triggered Don's automatic retaliation... yada yada.
Not to mention that to even *cast* the spell he had to bind some extra spirits to draw energy from. Which solved the original problem, more or less.
But anyway, they eventually headed out to the village. Charlie was greeted by the woman with the baby, who'd been waiting for him. Apparently, she'd normally have taken the baby to Kicking Bird (the dream shaman who, according to Agamemnon, was doing fine, but according to everyone else and common sense was captured and basically screwed) who'd told her it was very important for him to see the children of the village at the one-month mark. With him gone, she'd gone to Charlie, as the next best thing.
The baby had a slight fever, and was sleeping all the time. Charlie examined it medically and magically, but found nothing wrong with it -- which left either a really strange and exotic disease, or some sort of periodic mental or spiritual attack by an outside entity. Or the baby might be psionically active itself. After draining some intelligence from the baby (temporarily, as an experiment to see if the spell he'd meditated on worked) ("Okay, now I'm going to absorb some of your child's spiritual essence, to see if that will help me understand what's wrong with him.") he summoned an owl spirit and tried to bind it to watch the baby...
...and failed. And would have failed the contest of wills that followed (since Charlie didn't know the protective rituals that would make summoning and binding spirits safe), except that the extra IQ from draining the baby pushed him over the edge. Moral of the story: Steal IQ from sleeping babies whenever you get the chance. The owl was angry that the service Charlie demanded (watching over the baby) was something it would have done willingly -- spirits! Go figure.
Meanwhile, Don had been sleeping in the back of the car, dreaming about a talking rabbit that wanted to speak with John, and John had been playing with the children of the village, teaching them to fight with sticks, and not asking about the ferals. When Charlie got back, he asked if John had asked about the Ferals, and the kids volunteered that, yes, about one in six of the villagers had gone missing recently -- they wouldn't say they were dead.
As payment for blessing the woman's child, Charlie and the others were granted a guide through the mine (they could have just walked in anyway, it wasn't guarded or anything). Charlie wanted to see Kicking Bird's ritual space, so they were led through an hour and a half of narrow, branching, unbraced mine tunnels (the guide explained that Kicking Bird had used his magic to guide them in the safe patterns to dig, and had been locating and subduing the sort of animal spirits that most shaman petitioned with spirit quests) to the place of power far below.
It was corrupted, as Charlie had observed in his own world, but here it was obvious that the corruption was Kicking Bird's doing, and modus operandi. Charlie examined the ritual materials present, and found symbols for Ferals, for Nobles, for Vampiric Wolverines, and, out of the corner of his eye, for Kits. He tried to copy the symbol for Kits onto a real piece of paper (the symbol was actually Between, because the Kits had left the world for the moment) and got sucked between. Oops.
Outside the room, the guide (and John) forgot why they'd come down here, remembering instead that they were there so that Don could get a refill of Artemisite. Don tried to pull a 'digging tool' out of his pocket, and accidentally got a Thoqqua -- which did dig up quite a bit of the explosive material (and presented it unharmed), but horribly burned Don's hand getting pulled out of the pocket, and set the coal on fire.
Burning Coal Mine == BAD. Everyone (even Charlie) got outside before the smoke got too thick to breathe, but the smoke was obviously getting worse, and there was a LOT of unmined coal to burn -- it could burn for years.
The villagers didn't seem too concerned (they were sure Kicking Bird would know what to do, as soon as he came back), but Charlie (after talking to Don to get pulled back into the world) suggested summoning their tribe's guardian spirit to muster the help of other spirits and put out the fire -- to save the mine, and preserve access to the powerful ritual space below. They told him the spirit's name (Faeryn) and some dances they did to honor him, and Charlie summoned the creature to ask for its help.
A giant wolf appeared in response to the summons. Seeing it, Charlie recognized the 'dog' which had burned its pawprint into his chest, a few weeks before. "What do you want THIS time?" it asked.
This was awkward. It was even more awkward when Charlie dropped Kicking Bird's name, and found out that Kicking Bird was Faeryn's enemy, and had somehow been keeping him from his people.
Charlie did his best to recover from those faux pas, but failed, and the spirit chose to pervert his request into collapsing the mine, sealing it airtight, then destroying the air inside -- which quenched the fire, but made it suicidal to ever attempt to mine there again, at least while the vacuum was preserved. And put the ritual space very out of reach.
last session | next session
We had a session of Lazar's Underworld-themed GURPS game. We recovered from our wounds, and did some light work around the area, then I started meddling in things I didn't understand.
Charlie turned back into a human (or, well, native) before the party got back from the temple to the town. Don took the opportunity to apply first aid (he hadn't wanted to try it on a bird), then he and John spent a long time mummy-tying Charlie to his horse.
Charlie was out for a whole day. Don spent it making up a batch of healing salve (and training the bits of Enochin he still had -- John's friend, with the head, was still AWOL -- to make more of it), and John spent it talking to people and finding out what was going on. The day after that, Charlie and Don were more or less up to speed, but John was still hurt -- he came around to talk with them and ask about what to do next.
John and Charlie both had reason to go to the native village with the mine in it -- John was, apparently, now charged with getting rid of the *Feral* problem instead of the Kits problem, since Kits had now always been a myth (they'd fled the universe after the beating they'd taken in the battle for the robot head), and native-like ferals had started turning up recently. Charlie had been asked to bless a baby, and wanted to inspect the place of power that, in the Industrial Athens, had been under John's mine. Don decided to come along to mine some more Artemisite to power his laser shotgun.
But first, Charlie wanted to rest and recover some fatigue. He spent the time meditating on how to avoid using up so much fatigue so quickly... and learned the spells 'steal strength' and 'steal wisdom'. He practiced the temporary version of steal strength on Don, figuring that Don rarely used his strength and wouldn't notice, but this triggered Don's automatic retaliation... yada yada.
Not to mention that to even *cast* the spell he had to bind some extra spirits to draw energy from. Which solved the original problem, more or less.
But anyway, they eventually headed out to the village. Charlie was greeted by the woman with the baby, who'd been waiting for him. Apparently, she'd normally have taken the baby to Kicking Bird (the dream shaman who, according to Agamemnon, was doing fine, but according to everyone else and common sense was captured and basically screwed) who'd told her it was very important for him to see the children of the village at the one-month mark. With him gone, she'd gone to Charlie, as the next best thing.
The baby had a slight fever, and was sleeping all the time. Charlie examined it medically and magically, but found nothing wrong with it -- which left either a really strange and exotic disease, or some sort of periodic mental or spiritual attack by an outside entity. Or the baby might be psionically active itself. After draining some intelligence from the baby (temporarily, as an experiment to see if the spell he'd meditated on worked) ("Okay, now I'm going to absorb some of your child's spiritual essence, to see if that will help me understand what's wrong with him.") he summoned an owl spirit and tried to bind it to watch the baby...
...and failed. And would have failed the contest of wills that followed (since Charlie didn't know the protective rituals that would make summoning and binding spirits safe), except that the extra IQ from draining the baby pushed him over the edge. Moral of the story: Steal IQ from sleeping babies whenever you get the chance. The owl was angry that the service Charlie demanded (watching over the baby) was something it would have done willingly -- spirits! Go figure.
Meanwhile, Don had been sleeping in the back of the car, dreaming about a talking rabbit that wanted to speak with John, and John had been playing with the children of the village, teaching them to fight with sticks, and not asking about the ferals. When Charlie got back, he asked if John had asked about the Ferals, and the kids volunteered that, yes, about one in six of the villagers had gone missing recently -- they wouldn't say they were dead.
As payment for blessing the woman's child, Charlie and the others were granted a guide through the mine (they could have just walked in anyway, it wasn't guarded or anything). Charlie wanted to see Kicking Bird's ritual space, so they were led through an hour and a half of narrow, branching, unbraced mine tunnels (the guide explained that Kicking Bird had used his magic to guide them in the safe patterns to dig, and had been locating and subduing the sort of animal spirits that most shaman petitioned with spirit quests) to the place of power far below.
It was corrupted, as Charlie had observed in his own world, but here it was obvious that the corruption was Kicking Bird's doing, and modus operandi. Charlie examined the ritual materials present, and found symbols for Ferals, for Nobles, for Vampiric Wolverines, and, out of the corner of his eye, for Kits. He tried to copy the symbol for Kits onto a real piece of paper (the symbol was actually Between, because the Kits had left the world for the moment) and got sucked between. Oops.
Outside the room, the guide (and John) forgot why they'd come down here, remembering instead that they were there so that Don could get a refill of Artemisite. Don tried to pull a 'digging tool' out of his pocket, and accidentally got a Thoqqua -- which did dig up quite a bit of the explosive material (and presented it unharmed), but horribly burned Don's hand getting pulled out of the pocket, and set the coal on fire.
Burning Coal Mine == BAD. Everyone (even Charlie) got outside before the smoke got too thick to breathe, but the smoke was obviously getting worse, and there was a LOT of unmined coal to burn -- it could burn for years.
The villagers didn't seem too concerned (they were sure Kicking Bird would know what to do, as soon as he came back), but Charlie (after talking to Don to get pulled back into the world) suggested summoning their tribe's guardian spirit to muster the help of other spirits and put out the fire -- to save the mine, and preserve access to the powerful ritual space below. They told him the spirit's name (Faeryn) and some dances they did to honor him, and Charlie summoned the creature to ask for its help.
A giant wolf appeared in response to the summons. Seeing it, Charlie recognized the 'dog' which had burned its pawprint into his chest, a few weeks before. "What do you want THIS time?" it asked.
This was awkward. It was even more awkward when Charlie dropped Kicking Bird's name, and found out that Kicking Bird was Faeryn's enemy, and had somehow been keeping him from his people.
Charlie did his best to recover from those faux pas, but failed, and the spirit chose to pervert his request into collapsing the mine, sealing it airtight, then destroying the air inside -- which quenched the fire, but made it suicidal to ever attempt to mine there again, at least while the vacuum was preserved. And put the ritual space very out of reach.
last session | next session
